Colm Keaveney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have a tough act to follow. Of course it is not easy to take money from children. Of course it is not easy to take money from child benefit. It is very difficult to take money from elderly people. It is very difficult when elderly people have to have their phones cut off. It is not easy to take money from those people who cannot protect themselves. Those dangerous young people put up a resistance.

It was a socially divisive budget setting young against old, rural against urban, the able against the disabled, those with jobs against the jobless, public against private. The budget was socially divisive by attacking what keeps people together. People are fighting each other because of the policies designed by the Government. People will not come together to offer an opposition because everyone is worried and at their wits' end. I agree with Deputy Durkan that it is not easy to take money from people who cannot defend themselves. It is very difficult for people such as that to stand up against city hall.

The Minister of State, Deputy Perry, knows I have great personal regard for him. However, once again the Government is seeking to pull a three-card trick on the people. We hear a lot of talk about fairness and about spreading the burden across society fairly. I have noticed that this language is well overlaid with a practised faux empathy. I have just listened to a dose of it. When one looks behind the curtain or up the sleeve of the Minister attempting to pull the three-card trick, one finds that the truth bears no relation to the bluff being pulled on the people. The Government - unfortunately, the Labour Party in particular - sought to excuse a savagely regressive budget last year by introducing what it described as a catalogue of taxation on the rich, a range of wealth taxes. The Government admitted then that it would take a greater portion of income from low-income families but that it would catch the wealthy with wealth taxes. Half of the promised €500 million in wealth taxes introduced in last year's budget were to be raised from a limit of €60,000 on tax relief on pensions. The Government, willingly or unwittingly, has failed to implement these measures. The wealthy have not paid their taxes. The half a billion euro scheduled in wealth taxes has not been collected. Instead, this Finance Bill is making an arrangement to protect many of the gold-plated pensions, including those of many former Ministers. Senior civil servants will be protected.

Senior politicians are protected and as a relatively well-paid public servant, I am no worse off as a result of this budget, which I am ashamed to say.

Coincidentally, this Bill will protect the pensions of the people who designed the legislation. The Government has wilfully demonstrated an inability to enforce last year's initiative to collect a wealth tax in the country, which has resulted in a shortfall of €130 million. The wealthy can avoid that tax but ordinary people cannot avoid the hand of the Government; it is not easy taking money from people who cannot defend themselves. Coincidentally, the €130 million is equal to the value of the levy on top of the other levy; the wealthy are not paying their taxes but the worker is levied in order to pay for the shortfall in the wealth tax introduced last year. It seems very easy to do this. Needless to say, these effects will be apparent in the economy. There are people struggling on modest pensions but some others are getting off the hook.

In the recent property boom, many in this House expressed the opinion that a mature rental sector drove that expansion. That is the kind of rental sector that would be common across Europe. A key problem is that the sector was and is dominated by a very short-term approach, both in terms of gains sought by an investor and the structures provided for in rental agreements. Regulation of the sector has been poor, to say the least, and rather than seeking a more mature approach to a rental scheme in the country for families who wish to rent as a long-term option, the Government has failed to make any progress in improving regulation of the sector. For renting to become a viable long-term option, it must be encouraged, and landlords must be responsible in approaching a relationship with a tenant with a long-term strategy.

The Government has imposed PRSI on rental revenue without regard to the costs incurred by the property owner who is renting the property. That will drive away investors in the rental sector and lead to ordinary people being denied the opportunity to provide for a proper home for themselves and their families. The drive towards ownership as the only method by which a family may have a home has also been reinforced by savage cuts in social housing funding, as noted this morning in the House. The investment in the capital programme for social housing is €15 million but we failed to capture €130 million from the wealthy in this country. There are over 100,000 families on the social housing waiting list, and the €15 million to be invested in their future is a tenth of what we failed to capture from the wealth tax last year.

PRSI is also charged on income derived from interest on savings, and it is added on top of the DIRT rate of 41%. This is one of the ten savage cuts that have been implemented against elderly people, who depend on savings to secure some income in order to get through their final years. This Bill will also ensure that health insurance costs will rise for more than 500,000 policyholders. Coupled with the Government's policy of reducing the number of discretionary medical cards, this will drive even more people into the no-man's land of health care, meaning that ultimately there will be a worsening of the health outcome for individuals in society.

These measures are an attack on the prudent and those who have planned for themselves, and it is in stark contrast to the rhetoric which emanated from both Government parties prior to the last general election. Some members of the Minister of State's party are fond of stressing the need for responsibility, and I agree with such sentiments. I am in favour of using tax and welfare codes to encourage separated parents to continue to play a full and wholesome part in the lives of children. Most of them do so with credit. The welfare of children has been a key line of rhetoric from the Government, and the children's referendum afforded them a great opportunity to beat chests on the theme of children's welfare. Again, this seems to have been only for show and diversion, as in this Bill there is a direct attack on the ability of separated parents to play a full part in children's lives.

The Government does not want to rock the boat. Irrespective of personal relations in Europe and the ambitions of some in the Government in Europe, we should admit that a disaster is hanging out there for this country, and we need to make progress in a key area, which is the issue of the bank bailout. I call on the Minister to pursue aggressively the game changer we were led to believe was imminent. It is time to deliver for the people of this country, who have suffered greatly after five, six and seven austerity budgets. It is time for people to have hope so that a dark cloud can be replaced with a silver lining for the people of this country. They are entitled to have hope for tomorrow.

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