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

I spoke about this matter at length on Committee Stage. I am concerned about some of the aspects of the relevant section. As stated on the earlier amendment, the universal social charge, USC, will not apply and, therefore, people with AVCs are not the poorest in society. These individuals have pensions and they have been able to top them up from their incomes. Basically, the Minister is not applying USC to these individuals and they are obtaining a benefit as a result.

There is a major issue relating to pensions which must be examined. I have no objection to amendments Nos. 3 and 4, which basically call for the laying of reports before the House. However, I am not committed to supporting them in the context of the direction they propose we should take. This entire issue must be examined. The more consideration we give to pensions the better. I am of the view that there has been wholesale abuse of the taxation code in the context of pension reliefs. I spelt out specific examples in this regard on Committee Stage. As the Minister stated, for every tax relief of which a person avails, someone else must pay tax. Studies relating to pension tax reliefs indicate that 80% of such reliefs go to the top 20% of earners in society. We are not talking about €40 million in this regard, we are talking about something in excess of €500 million. That is a massive amount of money. We cannot justify the continuation of these tax reliefs into the future. The Government is moving in the right direction but is doing so far too slowly. I have a number of concerns regarding what it is doing but we will debate those in respect of later amendments. The reports that are being sought in amendments Nos. 3 and 4 would be welcome. The more information we have at our disposal the better.

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