Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 3, between lines 11 and 12, to insert the following:“3. (1) The Local Government (Household Charge) Act 2011 is hereby repealed in its entirety.

(2) This repeal will be deemed to have come into operation on the date of enactment of this Act.”.

The purpose of the Sinn Féin amendment is to exempt everybody in society from the local property tax, LPT. We seek to repeal the LPT to build a link between income and taxation in order that there is some recognition for the level of taxation a person pays on the basis of that income. Everybody in this Chamber will have had dozens of people come to them over recent years who are living in properties valued at €200,000 or €300,000 but may have no income coming in. I know people who are scrimping at a phenomenal rate. They live a subsistence type of life, eking out everything they can themselves and not purchasing very much in order that they can survive and pay a mortgage. The Government does not recognise this and charges them a property tax. We all know individuals who are put to the pin of their collar. The Government does not allow for these situations.

Our strong view is that if we want to build a stable tax base, we need to have a firm linkage between tax and ability to pay. If we want to ensure we do not have another crash, we need to ensure personal taxation is the source of revenue and that we do not go towards less stable, more volatile corporation taxes, for example, as our tax base.

The Government brought through legislation on the basis that property value is some kind of representation of the wealth of the family, yet today it has come back to the table saying that the value of a house is no longer in its eyes a proper representation of the wealth of the family. By 2019, the average house price will have risen by €68,000, leading to an extra €180 per house in this tax. The Government realised it needed to apply a brake. There is a fault in the system. If taxation were allowed to develop in exactly the way the Government had envisaged, it would all of a sudden create increased havoc for families.

A lot of the problem is that the Government seeks to reduce the taxation on upper earners. USC has been cut for those on more than €70,000 by €180 million when housing gets €69 million or health gets €18 million. There might be some confusion on this. I point out that Sinn Féin is not opposing each of these sections. It is looking at local authority level and anywhere else to ameliorate the damage this tax is doing to people. The purpose of our amendments is to repeal this unfair, noxious tax in its entirety.

See this speech in context