Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 64:

In page 57, after line 32, to insert the following:“58.The Minister shall, within 6 months of the passing of this Act, bring a report on the second reduced rate of VAT of 9 per cent and additional revenue that could be raised by bringing this rate back to 13.5 per cent.”.

We had quite a bit of discussion on Committee Stage about this. I will be brief. If we returned to the 13.5% VAT rate on the hospitality sector it would raise €491 million. That is a lot of money, which could be better spent elsewhere. I did not necessarily agree with the decision at the time, but there was a case for giving a tax break to the hospitality sector when we were in the depths of recession. However, it has boomed since. One only has to walk the streets of Dublin to see how well the hospitality sector is doing. I do not think we could justify using €491 million in this way. It could be spent on plenty of other things, most notably addressing the housing crisis. Many other areas could benefit from this money. We should return to the 13.5% rate. The Minister made it clear he did not agree and I do not expect he will change his mind on foot of what I have said.

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