Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

It is ironic that in the Minister's first response he talked about the need to look at the impact of indirect taxes but he then cited a study that suggests that Ireland has a progressive tax model based purely on direct taxation because when indirect taxation is taken into account, the bottom decile of the population pays effectively the same percentage of their total income in tax as the top 10% does. We do not have a progressive tax system when indirect taxation is taken into account.

On the idea that the Government wants to solve the crises and so on, the Minister cannot answer on the issue of housing. We had a landlord's budget. It was delivered by a Government that acts in the interests of landlords and the main action in terms of the housing crisis was to choose to funnel more money towards landlords in HAP payments, which are a direct subsidy from the State to them, and additional tax allowances. The fact that the Government chose to do that as opposed to allocating any significant extra money to invest in building houses to resolve the crisis precisely proves the point that it is an ideological budget driven by the interests of the 1% in this country.

See this speech in context