Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We in Sinn Féin believe this is not a fair tax. We have been consistent on that position from start. It hits low- and middle-income families the hardest, as many are already struggling with negative equity and high mortgage interest payments. Also included in the tax are homes and estates that are not taken in charge and therefore get few, if any, local authority services. Council tenants who do not own their homes are included in this tax.

This tax has never delivered what it was supposed to. It has not delivered the extra local services that were promised when it was delivered. While the Bill contains proposals to increase the share that will be assigned to local areas from 2023 onwards, I remain sceptical as to how much will actually be delivered.

We all remember at its inception that the new tax was to fund local government while at the same time a similar amount of funding from central Government subvention was withdrawn and, therefore, virtually no additional local services were ever delivered. I was a council member for a number of years and remember it well. Homeowners should not be burdened with this unfair local property tax. We have seen from information recently released by the Revenue Commissioners that, on average, 43,000 people defer payments every year. This shows it is a burden too far for many home occupiers. Those who defer are charged an interest rate on the tax, as the Minister knows. That is wrong. Those who are unable pay are burdened with additional charges and if you cannot pay, your debt grows and grows. The tax does not take into account people's ability to pay. While there are different bands depending on property valuation, for those on the lowest incomes, the tax amount is still far too much.

As I have outlined, I am opposed to this tax but in the absence of it being abolished, we must look at how it operates and the adjustments that are proposed. The adjustment to the lower property tax band is a positive step and should reduce the local property tax burden for some of our lower earners. In March, Daft.ie issued a report showing that the average asking price for a house in Limerick city and its suburbs is €225,000, which represents an increase of 11.6%. It is an amount that excludes many local people from mortgage application. How can we expect somebody who is renting on a low to medium income to be able to afford such a place without putting them under excessive stress to keep up their repayments and then saddle them with a further tax on their home? While the bands have been adjusted, tax on a home worth €225,000 is still too much, particularly when the necessary local services are not being provided. We persist with this tax that does not take account of people's ability to pay. Many of our older citizens may own their properties but are income poor. We need a more progressive way to fund local authorities, many of which have not seen the benefits of the property tax, a tax that was introduced as part of a suite of measures to bail out the banks at the time.

I have a problem with the timing of the Bill. We are talking about much money being taken from somebody's pocket and that is a significant responsibility we take on as elected Deputies. It is particularly important that sufficient time is afforded for us to discuss such issues. I would like to record my distaste at how this Bill is being rammed through before the end of term. The Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach should have been allowed to do its work and fully scrutinise the Bill but it was denied that opportunity. We are now discussing a Bill that was only published on the Oireachtas website last Friday. That is not good enough for any legislation, let alone legislation that affects people's money.

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