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

The property tax, so-called, is a fundamentally unjust tax because it takes no account whatsoever of the homeowner's income or ability to pay. It becomes even more unfair in the context of the disastrous failure of this Government to control a fundamentally dysfunctional housing market. Property prices have gone off the Richter scale. In areas like my own, as well as much of Dublin and many other urban centres, the value of property has gone through the roof and that will impact the rate of property tax people have to pay. Of course, that bears no relationship to the income of the person in the house. As nobody can afford these property prices, the people who happen to live in areas where prices are extremely high and have gone out of control will be punished just for living in those particular areas. In the long term this tax, as well as many other things like the failure to build social housing in these areas, will lead to a social cleansing of many of them. People on lower incomes simply will not be able to live in certain places. The property tax punishes them for the fact they happen to live in a particular place.

It is noteworthy it is not only the socialist left. We have been saying this for a long time and, indeed, actively campaigned against the introduction of this tax. I note Dr. Lorcan Sirr, on "Morning Ireland" this morning, when asked directly is it a fair tax and is it a regressive tax, said that it is not a fair tax and it is a regressive tax. The Government should accept that. In the aftermath of Covid, in particular, it should not be loading it on people. The Government should abolish this tax and introduce a proper wealth tax.

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