Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I again urge the Minister to see if there is any way to continue with this rate. It is very worthwhile. It has worked and is a beacon for other sectors of the economy. Seeing tourism-related and labour-intensive industries growing jobs gives hope to other areas, for example, construction, which accounts for 100,000 or one-quarter of the people on the live register. They could potentially benefit from something like this. I accept that something must pay for it, but there are other innovative ways of raising the revenue to do that. I was told recently that the €1 levy on wine has yielded €45 million in the first eight months of this year and will yield perhaps €70 million in the full 12 months. Consider other measures. A 1 cent levy on text messaging would apparently yield €120 million based on current usage patterns. If we had put a small levy on windfalls, such as EuroMillions jackpots, it would have yielded €20 million this year. There are choices to be made and I urge the Minister to explore every avenue to try to keep this rate in place to maintain and possibly create more jobs.

See this speech in context