Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Does the Deputy know of any case where legislation was deemed to be unconstitutional because Opposition Deputies did not have enough time to debate it?

There were assumptions on the part of some Deputies that adapting a house to enable a disabled person to live there would increase the value of that house. That is not true because in many cases, the adaption of a house to suit disabled persons will reduce the value and in some cases, quite substantially. Deputies will be familiar, from their constituency work, with this and cannot tell me that the changes that have to be made, of necessity, to suit disabled persons increase the value of houses, if Deputies have ever been in a house that has been adapted. Of course, that will be reflected in the valuation and the Revenue Commissioners are reasonable people. I cannot see them pursuing anybody who explains that the value of their house has gone down because it had to be adapted for use by a disabled person.

The last point I would like to make concerns people's challenge to the fact that the Revenue Commissioners were being entrusted with the collection of this tax. Revenue is the State agency that is responsible for collecting taxes so who better to collect it? One of the problems with the flat-rate tax was that it was inadequately collected, despite the best efforts of those that were given the responsibility. Revenue is setting about this in a systematic way and is giving very clear information. Deputies have made some good points but we have before us an amendment Bill with 16 sections. If we were dealing with the terms of that Bill rather than listening to a whole series of Second Stage speeches again, we would be making more progress.

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