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

I am listening to this debate and some people here are in need of a history lesson, as well as perhaps a mathematical lesson in terms of what progressivity means and what it is meant to relate to, which is income and wealth. In any case, I will deal with the history lesson first.

The local property tax was first introduced in 2013 as part of the Fine Gael and the Labour Party Government's austerity agenda to make working people pay for the economic crash and the bank bailout. It was met with a massive campaign of opposition with tens of thousands of people mobilising. I remember protesting outside this building whenever a Fine Gael Ard Fheis was taking place. People took to the streets understanding precisely what the property tax was, which was an austerity measure, and to vent their anger at the injustice of what Fine Gael and the Labour Party were doing. We know that it was ultimately run through by Revenue, through payroll deduction, despite it having no electoral mandate and despite the clearly expressed opposition of a large majority of people. It was an unfair and regressive tax on people's family homes then and it is an unfair, regressive tax on people's family homes today.

The new rules being introduced by the Government mean that homes built since 2013, which were previously exempt, will now have to pay the local property tax. Other exemptions are also being removed and there is a new method for calculating the tax that will increase bills for very many people. We fought the introduction of the local property tax in 2012 and in 2013. We are not ashamed to continue to fight against this unfair austerity tax and to demand that it is abolished.

We have an alternative proposal for a progressive income tax on high incomes, taxes on second homes, taxes on wealth and corporation tax, on which I will now go into a little more detail. In looking back at articles from the time of the struggle against the property tax I came across a quote from a protestor. In late March 2012, 46 year-old Brian Murray said:

It seems to me that the working-class people of this country are being asked to pay for everything. All the money seems to be going down a black hole to the bankers and the bondholders. They just appear to be fleecing us and I’m very angry about it.

This summed up the sentiment of those who were protesting. It was not the people with large houses protesting for the right not to be taxed. It was people protesting against austerity. The Government's victory in imposing the property tax against the wishes of people who mobilised and against the majority of the population was a pyrrhic victory. Let us remember that Fine Gael and the Labour Party got their just desserts in the election in 2016. It was the local property tax and the water charges that drove the Labour Party down from 33 seats to seven seats and Fine Gael down from 66 seats to 50 seats. It is clear, unfortunately, that the lessons have not been learned by the Government. When we consider the details of the proposals, and the impact they will have on a significant minority of households, it is clear that the Government is determined to continue on the same track.

Close to 750,000 households will face an increase in property tax bills. The Government does not want this figure to be widely known and is saying that it is a technical thing, that things are just changing around, and that most people are neither winning nor losing, and that some are winning. Almost three quarters of a million households face an increase in their local property tax. Added to this are the 100,000 households that face paying the property tax when they previously were not doing so.

Section 19 makes the owners of properties leased for more than 20 years to local authorities or to approved housing bodies, AHBs, liable to the local property tax rather than the local authorities or the AHBs being liable. It is likely, however, that the costs will simply be passed on from the funds to the local authorities or the AHBs. The only real import of this is to copperfasten the very bad model of long-term leasing of social housing from cuckoo funds, which we remember although we do not have to remember that far back. Just last week the Government rammed through a tax break for them.

Section 22 makes the buyers of properties sold by local authorities or AHBs liable for local property tax due on the normal market value of the property rather than a reduced €90 rate available that would otherwise apply. The significance of that is it shows the Government intends to continue selling off social housing despite the housing crisis.

We welcome the exemption for homes affected by mica. This should continue for as long as necessary and not just for the six years provided in the Bill. As already mentioned by many other speakers, however, it is very inadequate when we consider that people have to pay for the inspections and so on themselves. Fundamentally, the builders and businesses responsible should be made to pay the full remediation costs of homes damaged by mica.

I will conclude on the alternatives. Obviously, one very big alternative is the question of a Covid wealth tax. In the context of a pandemic even the IMF has raised the question of having wealth taxes.

The Government is not interested in going there. It is a fact that the wealthy have gotten much wealthier over the course of the pandemic. On an international level, Jeff Bezos has doubled his wealth from approximately $100 billion to more than $200 billion in the course of the pandemic. The same has happened in this country where the likes of Denis O'Brien massively increased his wealth. It means the increased concentration of wealth in the top households. The richest 1% of households, according to the Central Bank, all of whom are multimillionaires, own 15% of net household wealth in this country. The top 10% control more than 50% of the net household wealth in this country. A 3% wealth tax on the top 1% would raise €3.6 billion, many multiples of what is raised by the regressive local property tax.

I was struck by the irony of a Fine Gael speaker, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, who asked how we could be opposed to the property tax, which is a tax of such progressivity. She was astounded at the idea that anyone could object to it because it is progressive. Let us look at what the Government she supports is doing on corporation tax right now. For years, we have railed in this place against the tax haven status of Ireland. We have said it is immoral in terms of the robbery that takes place, in particular of people in lesser developed countries, from their public services, and from people in this country. We have talked about the immorality of it. We have also pointed out the fact that it is an unsustainable model because one cannot win a race to the bottom in corporation tax rates; it is only the corporations that win. Someone is always going to be able to come in to undercut. We saw that with Trump, bargain-basement Brexit, and various eastern European countries. It is not a sustainable model, but it is one to which the Government is committed. For years, every time that we have raised the question of corporation tax and ending Ireland's tax haven status, the Government has said it agreed with us – of course not on Ireland being a tax haven - but that it would like to increase the amount of taxes that corporations pay. However, the important point was that it could not be an Irish or EU process; it had to be an OECD process. It must be a worldwide process. In that context, the response was that it would be great, and the Government would love to be part of it. Joe Biden came along with his extremely watered down, inadequate proposal for a minimum corporation tax rate of 15% and signed up the vast majority of countries in the world. Some 130 countries, representing 90% of global GDP, have said they are all for it, but all of a sudden the Government is not in favour of global co-operation to increase the rate of tax that corporations pay. Ireland finds itself in the corner with Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Barbados, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines in saying that we could not possibly go along with that. Why? Because Ireland is a corporate tax haven. It is a model to which the Government is committed, despite the fact that it does not work for people in this country or for people around the world and is an utter dead end.

See this speech in context