Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for bringing forward this legislation. It is always difficult to bring in legislation of this kind or, indeed, any tax legislation. As my colleague, Deputy Bruton, said, there is never a good time to do this.

Recognising the changes the Minister has made to the bands, rates and so on, the difficulty taxpayers in my area of Dún Laoghaire are going to face will be in the context of revaluations. It is completely understandable that there be a revaluation from 2013 values. At that time, the State was on the cusp of an International Monetary Fund, IMF, bailout and we were trying to recover our employment situation, which had been so desperately bad. The valuations which people placed on their properties at that time, and on the basis of which they have been paying tax, were comparatively low. Nearly a decade later, the value of property has jumped quite a lot. The issue in my area, as in so many others, is going to be around revaluations.

People understand the nature of this tax and the basis for it. When it was introduced, we were entirely dependent on transaction taxes and income taxes. Both of those fell of a cliff when the financial crisis occurred. There is a real need for us, as a mature state, to have a broad-based and stable revenue generation mechanism, and the property tax contributes to that. I acknowledge the different measures the Minister has taken to try to enhance the fairness of it. He has brought in the new property owners since 2013 and he is encouraging measures to reduce vacancy and to bring those properties, particularly ones understandably vacated due to illness, back into use for other people. A rebalancing and fairness measure of interest to my constituents will be the redistribution of the property tax that is collected and keeping it 100% in the locality. That will be important to people.

People in my constituency are always surprised when they hear the proportion of property tax they pay goes to other parts of the country, although it is understandable why that was so for the period. However, property values in Dún Laoghaire have gone up very considerably, which is due to the finite amount of space and the increasing number of people who want live there. People there are potentially facing higher property taxes than those in other parts of the country. They will continue to pay but it is important to acknowledge that the money they are paying to local government will stay in their area and that they will see the benefit of that. It is not sustainable for me, as a Deputy for Dún Laoghaire, to say that this should be reduced, that the people in my area should be protected or that this or that group should be protected. We are a collective in Dáil Éireann and we are trying to fund the interests of the State generally. It is true there are some constituencies where constituents are going to face higher taxes than others because of property values, but we must be honest about the need to fund the State in a sustainable way. There is a dishonesty otherwise. It is simply not credible to oppose a tax of such progressivity and, in particular, for Sinn Féin to oppose it outright. There is broad consensus on this, although there are matters of detail in respect of which we will disagree. There is a progressivity to what is proposed that is genuinely fair. People want to see a sustainability to our tax base. We do not ever again need to go through the shocks we experienced before. I acknowledge that this is difficult legislation to bring in and difficult for some Deputies to accept.

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