Paudie Coffey (Waterford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have the opportunity to contribute to this debate. Regardless of whether we like it, the property tax is needed to maintain essential local services in our communities. This Bill is an opportunistic, populist move by the Opposition. The same Opposition regularly calls for improved services in every local authority in the country and insists on more funding for communities in those same local authorities, with no regard for where the money will come from or how it is raised. This is not the political leadership or responsibility that is required in this country at present. It is just scaremongering, peddling misinformation and encouraging people not to pay taxes that are passed by the democratic institutions of this State.

Fianna Fáil, the party that ran our economy onto the rocks, signed up for a property tax as part of the bailout terms it agreed with the troika. Now it is doing a U-turn for populist reasons. It is vote-gathering in a disingenuous way. Sinn Féin opposed the household charge and now opposes the property tax but in its so-called alternative budgets it did not make provision for the resulting shortfall of over €160 million.

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