Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The broad background to this is that the rate for non-residential commercial property for many years at different times in our economy was 9%. It then moved down to 6% and then to 2%. It went from 6% to 2% because so little activity was happening in any of the different forms of non-residential commercial property to which the rate applied.

At 2% it is a quarter of what it has been at most recent points in our economy and it is one-third of what it was some years ago. If we do not use opportunities like this in our economy to bring rates like this back to a normal level we will be back to where we were before the many different crises that we are trying to get out of hit us. That is rates of taxation that are too low, across too narrow a base to fund public services that people need. It is for this reason that this budget contains measures to raise taxes because if we do not do that now the next difficulty we get into we will be doing again what we do every time there is a big difficulty in Ireland, namely, increase taxes. Most other economies around the world decrease them when they get into difficulty. That is the background to this change and why it is the right change. We are simply going back to where we have been for most of our very recent past.

On some of the points put to me, Deputy Mattie McGrath appears to think it is a bad thing that I did not flag this move in advance. If I had flagged it in advance it would have been to the benefit of several people in our economy who would have made a very significant sum of money if I had let them know what we were going to do. If I had done it I can only imagine what Deputy Mattie McGrath would be accusing me of doing the next day in the Dáil.

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