Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

However, if their tax liability is high enough that is basically it. While there is a minimum threshold there is no maximum. I do not live in Limerick and have not spent much time there but I have been around the city and seen the accommodation in Moyross. Many people there would love the Minister to be announcing that if they carried out upgrades to their houses, the Government would write it off from their tax liability for the next ten years. This clause basically provides for a grant to repair a house by way of tax foregone. The people who own the Georgian houses are able to avail of this provision but the people in social housing or normal houses are unable to avail of it. Indeed the Government is asking them to pay a property tax, either through increased rent in social housing or directly via the property tax. This is seriously questionable and I do not understand the rationale behind identifying a select number of properties. Just selecting people in Georgian houses does not make sense. If the Government wants an area-based scheme, it should specify an area-based scheme. Why restrict it to Georgian houses? Why put no upper limit on it? At a time when the Government is asking 1.8 million homeowners to pay additional tax, why is it effectively providing 100% grants for people who own Georgian houses and are willing to live in them to renovate and upgrade them? It stinks to high heaven. These are some of the issues that we will also go through later.

The largest tax take this year is planned to come from family-home tax, and I will deal with this in a moment. The Bill contains several measures to increase indirect taxation, namely through excise duties and a change in certain tax treatments. One of the more notable changes is the taxing of maternity benefit for new mothers and the Minister has added to this by taxing adoptive benefit, and health and safety benefit - a payment paid to expectant mothers and breastfeeding mothers who cannot be accommodated in their workplace. These payments were traditionally left untaxed. Last year I said the Government would probably do this and this is what it has done. They were left untaxed in recognition of the cost incurred by mothers and families when bringing a new baby into the household. It was interesting to hear the Constitutional Convention at the weekend discussing the clause on facilitating mothers to stay at home and its decision to bring that clause into the modern age. It was interesting because the Constitution has a specific clause to facilitate mothers in the home and yet, the Government has step-by-step tried to dismantle the financial support mothers and parents receive when having children, ranging from the measures we are discussing now to the constant attacks on child benefit in the Social Welfare Act and what has been reported in the media in the past week.

The Bill also legislates for the provisions in the budget to increase excise duty on alcohol and cigarettes, to increase VRT and to extend carbon tax to solid fuels. These tax hikes all tend to hit middle and lower-income consumers disproportionately. The Minister is aware of this, yet each year he goes back to the same pockets and tries to squeeze a little more.

I am particularly concerned at the changes to VRT. Motorists and the Irish motor industry have been really feeling the effects of the recession. Fuel hikes, motor tax hikes, the licence fee hike in this Bill and diminishing income have all hit car sales and employment in the industry. The Irish motor trade continues to be a key employer across the State but it has been seriously hit by the recession. At its peak in December 2007, this sector accounted for 49,600 employees, but the industry had shed 14,300, 29%, of its workforce by the end of 2009. The increase in VRT is devastating for a fragile industry and the biannual number plate will not negate the impact of increased VRT rates.

While it is not addressed in the Bill, the Minister missed an opportunity to bring fairness to the motor tax system. I support the sub-classification of the bands, but this should have been done in a way that reduced the tax for small and family cars and increased it substantially on expensive cars. The environmental goal of forcing the car industry into making its models carbon efficient has succeeded. Now the Government should address the disparity that exists in the motor tax system whereby someone who owns a Nissan Micra is paying the same motor tax as someone driving a Volvo V50.

This brings me to everything that is missing in this Bill.

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