Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the fact the penny seems to be finally dropping in Government Buildings and the parliamentary party meetings of Fine Gael, and of Fianna Fáil as it made a very similar promise as it wanted to abolish 90% of the USC. Fine Gael wanted to go the full hog and abolish 100%, which would erode more than €4 billion of our tax base. By 2021, with no policy changes, this tax would bring in €5.2 billion per year. At least now we seem to be hearing that a substantial portion of it, if not all of it, will be retained but will be renamed or remodelled into the PRSI. Something that is not very clear is the Minister said the Department will carry out another assessment. An assessment was done last year on how the Government could abolish the USC over a period of time. Will the Minister state categorically the USC tax base, on which the State depended on until now, will not be eroded in the way presented by the Government and by Fine Gael, which showed abolishing the USC would cost the State up to €4 billion?

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