Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

If the Minister is that concerned, he has a very easy remedy that would put all our minds at rest, namely, backdate the introduction of the measures to 8, 9 or 10 October. The budget was brought in on 11 October. If he wanted to, the Minister could even backdate the introduction of the measures to 1 October. It is a fundamental principle of fairness in taxation that those in the know should not have access to privileged information which would allow them, as in this case, to mitigate significantly the likely amount of stamp duty they would have to pay. In addition, subsequent to the budget, fairly respected commentators suggested that the target would not be reached, partially, I suspect, because of the leaking, and that people in the business of tax arrangements and tax avoidance were able, therefore, to anticipate what the Minister would do. That was foolish from the Department's point of view. There were suggestions that the actual yield from the tax will not be what the Minister indicated in his budget speech. Obviously, we will discover the actual position over the coming year.

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