Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased to speak on Section 1 of the Bill but I am very disappointed that the Minister is guillotining this measure. When the Minister was on the opposition benches, he was constantly objecting to the guillotine. He made a big play that when he would be in Government it would not happen. We all understand that the guillotine has to be used occasionally but this is outrageous. Last Friday week, the Minister of State came here and summarily cancelled the Monday sitting. He then tried to say that it was due to lack of interest on this side of the House, which is a grossly unfair misrepresentation. I hate calling it the word "L-I-E" but it is misleading in the extreme. It is shameful.

If I were the Minister, I would be extremely worried. He is a long-serving Deputy in the House - a lot longer than myself - but there is not a sinner on the Government benches, not a solitary Member. Deputy Bannon has left but he was more interested in the big houses of the landed gentry. Some of them were burned in the troubled times to get rid of the Black and Tans, and they still have no roofs on them. He wants to put the roofs back on them and take the clothes off ordinary people. I cannot understand where he is coming from but he will find out when he goes back to Longford. When he goes up all the tree-lined avenues, he will meet all the fellows coming down against him.

This is not funny. How can the Minister introduce this measure? As Deputy Donnelly said, it gives the lie to Deputies who say they are voting for this because they can influence the Government from within. Deputy Michael McGrath will confirm that the late Brian Lenihan never sat in the House in those tough times without a few of us behind him in support. He was accessible and amenable to us, as well as accepting amendments from our own group. I do not know what has gone wrong with the Minister, Deputy Noonan. The Government's majority is the biggest problem because it thinks it can do what it likes and to hell with the ordinary people. It is like having Cromwell back again - to hell or to Connaught. As I said last week, it is too hell with the ordinary people, let them go to the soup kitchens or refuges for the homeless. That is what the Minister is going to do to people. We are talking about honest-to-goodness people who are going to get a deferral, if you would not mind.

I have been dealing with Revenue for 30 years, now going on for 31 years, and have yet to get a deferral from it. Moreover, if one gets a deferral, one will have the luxury of getting a 4% increase, in addition to the money one owes. That is a nice deferral. I would not like to deal with all my customers like that or rather, if that is the way I was treating them, I would like to do so. If one simply is unable to pay, one will have the pleasure of the imposition of an additional 8% penalty.

In what world is the Minister living? I note Deputy Durkan has arrived in the Chamber and am glad someone has come to support the Minister. The Deputy also has been in this House for a long time and as everyone here has the same mandate, I will not take that from any of the Members opposite. Despite Deputy Bannon's apparent view that I am a reject from some place else, I tell him I am a reject from nowhere and never will be, although if he continues in that fashion, he may be very soon. All Members of this House will be rejected if the Minister attempts to impose this tax on people who cannot pay. For example, he should consider those rural people who wished to build a house for themselves. They bought sites, hired planners and architects and paid their planning fees, development charges, stamp duty and legal fees. Moreover, they are attempting to pay back their mortgages as best they can and many of them are in huge negative equity. However, the Minister proposes to impose a property tax, a so-called local tax. Members know what will happen in this regard. The revenues will not be spent locally and even if they are, they will go first to the county managers, as well as the directors of services and all the senior officials, who will be paid anyway before any potholes will be filled or any services provided in rural Ireland.

I make the following point to the Minister and his officials, for whom I have no personal disrespect. Some of the mandarins in the Department of Finance, who are isolated and insulated, drew up this €500 million tax on the grounds that it is soft money which will easily be brought in. They thought they would not make a mess similar to the one they made last year with the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Hogan, namely, big Phil the regressor. They decided they would not make a bags of it, like last year - Members should excuse the expression, but would give responsibility to Revenue, which does not have much to do at present because so many business people are out of business. Many Revenue Commissioners staff have nothing to do because they have so few people from whom to take money. In turn, this is because the business all have closed down as a result of the policies of the present Administration, its predecessor and several Governments before that. It also is because of the policies of the permanent Government, who do not understand what it is to be obliged to earn a day's pay, to pay rates, to pay taxes or to pay anything else because they are cushioned. I never saw this so clearly as when the then Minister, Brian Lenihan, God rest him, introduced the pension levy. However, he reversed it for a small cohort of people. Where was that cohort? It was the people who were in his office every day of the week and had access to him. Although they persuaded him to go back on it, yet the man on the shovel and the clerical officer were obliged to pay it. That was one of the slippery slopes the country went down and they are continuing-----

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