Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Minister has not addressed the central concerns. Those in his party sometimes portrays themselves as representatives of the squeezed middle. On this matter the Minister is not representing the people he hopes to represent. Maybe the squeezed middle is better represented by this side of the House. Why did the Minister not go in a different direction and examine capping the overall levels of relief rather than looking at it in terms of premium amounts? Maybe he had that discussion on Committee Stage. That could have targeted what the Minister referred to as those gold-plated policies. The Minister could have taken a fundamentally different approach to it, maybe reducing the amount of tax expenditure to an extent. It is a tax expenditure, but I would have thought a cost-benefit analysis would be done when clawing back a tax expenditure. Why could the Minister not have examined it in a more fundamental way to come up with a provision that might have had a less harsh impact on the 57% of people who, the Minister has admitted, will be profoundly affected by this?

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