Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It is clear that this is not a public health measure; it is just a revenue-raising measure. Nobody could take seriously a Government claiming it was interested in public health when earlier today it has attacked the eligibility to health care of some of the most chronically ill and elderly people in the country. This measure is just about revenue but in so far as it is a revenue-raising exercise, it is a regressive measure. It regressively and disproportionately hits the least well-off and, as has been pointed out, it regressively and disproportionately hits the small rural pubs and those who work in them and depend on them.

If the Government wants to raise money from this sector to finance public health or anything else, it should increase the corporate tax take from the people at the top in a progressive way, as has been suggested. However, that is the one thing the Taoiseach will not do; he will not even consider higher corporate taxes on these people. Instead he adopts a measure that will further hit the ability of the least well-off to have a little bit of down time and it will hit the small rural pub. There is nothing progressive about it; it is just a revenue-raising grab.

See this speech in context