Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State. I appreciate that he ran out of time, as did I. The threshold must be substantially raised in order to end discrimination against urban dwellers, particularly Dublin dwellers. The rate of 33% is astronomically high. Although the average across the OECD is 7.7%, our Government, probably for ideological reasons, believes a 33% rate is acceptable. It is not acceptable. To pit income tax rates against inheritance tax rates is comparing apples and oranges.

They serve entirely different functions. To suggest the existence of the tax free allowance for an individual who happens to live in the family home and inherits it is unfair. A large number of elderly people live in my area. People from my area and from around the country have contacted me about this issue and they have almost wondered should they move their sons or daughters into their family home in order to avoid the tax liability. That is a dreadful pressure to put on families. It is not right.

The reality is that a huge number of families are living in negative equity. They may own apartments and may have moved to rental properties because they cannot raise their families in the apartments they bought during the Celtic tiger era. They are trapped in homes they are renting and cannot afford to move out of them. One of the solutions for many families is to inherit the family home but now they are subjected to this enormous tax liability, which makes it impossible for many of those young families, who have already been drastically hit by the downturn, to move into or to take over the family home on the death of a loved one. That is grotesquely unfair for families who are working hard, for deceased parents who wanted to pass on their family home to their children, and for those children, many of whom are trapped in negative equity and are being punished further by the Government with the imposition of this tax rate.

Specifically, the rate needs to be reduced at least back down to the 20%. Clearly, the thresholds urgently need to be raised. There urgently needs to be a relinking with the consumer price index. I am glad the Minister is considering that but he needs to go much further than that. The proposal in regard to instalment payments to Revenue is preposterous. The idea that people will have a noose around their necks because they have inherited their family home is not conscionable. I urge the Minister of State not to go down that road. This is about reducing the liability, not hanging it as a noose around families' necks long into the future. They already have enough debt, stress and challenges in life without hanging that further noose around their necks. I urge the Minister of State to ensure the Minister, Deputy Noonan, does not go down that road.

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