Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

The crushing by the Government of adequate time for debating this property tax compounds the legislation's lack of democratic credibility. The reality is that the property tax has not a shred of democratic legitimacy. Fine Gael, the majority party in government, categorically ruled out a property tax in its 2011 election manifesto when it claimed that "a recurring residential property tax on the family home is unfair". The Labour Party also ruled out the property tax as now to be implemented. Therefore, we have a blatant perversion of truthfulness by the two Government parties in front of the ordinary people of this State in coming here and doing an about-face in implementing this savage austerity tax, which will quickly grow to €1,000 per annum when combined with the water tax.

Next week, the Revenue Commissioners, who have been given responsibility by the Government to implement this odious tax, will send nearly 2 million letters to houses. There should be a wholesale rejection by the majority of householders or everyone out there of any demand by Revenue to make returns or give any information whatsoever. There should be a mass boycott of all aspects of this illegitimate tax being undemocratically foisted on the people. A massive movement of people power and worker power is needed to overturn this major attack on living standards and on people of middle and low incomes on behalf of the bailout agenda of the European financial institutions and on the diktats of the troika.

If 1 million households or more organised, refused to co-operate, boycotted the tax and brought their considerable opposition to the parties in government in a campaign of political public pressure, they could break the tax. It should be overturned. As an illegitimate law, it is legitimate for people to defy it through mass people power and worker power between now and the demand for the returns at the end of May. If the Government dares to deduct a single cent from social welfare payments or workers' wages, opposition should be carried through with industrial action in workplaces. This is the only legitimate response to a tax that has no democratic credibility and provides for a significant and unsupportable attack on the living standards and incomes of the poor, the unemployed and low and middle-income workers.

See this speech in context