Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The disappointed people will be not just those living in ghost estates – the Minister chose to discriminate between households even in those developments he argues ought to be exempt – but will be broader than that. The Government has applied a broad brush in levying the tax. It is the view of the Government that even people on social welfare and small incomes will be forced to pay the tax on their family home. The Government fails the fairness test. The Government seems to have a rather perverse definition of what constitutes fairness, but it is consistent because it has consistently gone back to the same set of people and consistently put its hand in the pockets of low and middle income families, people who are struggling just to get by and those living in unfinished ghost estates – polite language for building sites. It is perverse for a Minister, in particular one from the Labour Party, to offer in the Dáil rhetoric of fairness and fair play in that regard.

How does the Minister imagine families will pay the tax? He should put himself in the shoes of a family living in an incomplete housing development whose annual income is €30,000. Where will it get the money to meet the tax? How could the Minister suggest that in any way it represents fairness or equity for those people and their families?

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