Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Government has rushed this legislation for consideration before the Dáil. The Oireachtas Library and Research Service was unable to provide a full Bill digest for it due to the short timeframe between publication of the Bill and Second Stage. The Bill was not publicly available on the Oireachtas website until Friday, 9 July 2021 but it is down for a debate today.

It is a pity Deputy O'Connor has left. He said he was the youngest Deputy in the Chamber. He probably should have stayed to listen to the bit of knowledge I might be able to feed to him. If we look at property valuations today we notice that properties valued at €100,000 last year have jumped to €170,000 or €180,000 because of the lack of housing. The Minister is well aware of the cost of building because of the children's hospital, which has quadrupled in costs. The Government cannot control them. It should probably have used a Limerick builder who would have built it on time and on schedule.

The Minister is on about the local property tax. If we look at the price of building we see a 2,000 sq. ft. house costs €330,000 plus VAT. The Government gets €44,000 on top of the cost of building the house. Now let us look at the price of a site. People go for planning permission and pay €7,000 or €8,000 to get it through. When that has gone through they need to pay for water and electricity. This brings it to €11,000 or €12,000. Guess what? They have to pay the local authority another €6,000 or €7,000 to build on their own land. The Government gets €44,000 in VAT, the local authority gets €7,000 and now the Minister is coming back for more.

The Government has now taken the person who was building a house for €200,000 and put them in the €400,000 bracket. Before we leave the €400,000 bracket we have to furnish the house. This brings the cost of a 2,000 sq. ft. house up to €500,000 by the time it is finished. God forbid if people build a garage to house the lawnmower and the children's bicycles. They will be taxed again. Let us add on the 37% of the people who live in rural Ireland. They are now paying the most tax for emissions because they have no infrastructure. It is another tax on rural Ireland.

The Government then decided it wanted to pump water from the Shannon all the way to Dublin. I hope a meter will be put on it and the Government pays a premium price for every drop of water that goes out of the Shannon to Dublin. Then it might be able to give us money back to fix the infrastructure in Limerick and let us have adequate water. Fedamore in County Limerick has been on a boil notice for 16 months and there has been not one call from Irish Water, which is spending €5.5 billion over five years. Where is the money going? There is €4.5 billion here, €1 billion there and another €1 million there in Dublin. The Government is taking every cent from towns, villages and rural areas and spending it in Dublin. I have been saying this since I came here and people are now listening to what I am saying.

This is another tax the Government is trying to sneak through the Dáil using its majority. I want everyone in Ireland to look at the Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Green Party Deputies and when they come to their doors, which they will, I want the people of Ireland to remember how much money the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, has been asking them to pay on the back of Covid-19 and how much more pressure he will put their children, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers under after Covid-19. Now the Government is coming with another sneaky tax. People are already suffering trying to pay their mortgages to the banks the Government bailed out and again left the people of Ireland to the vulture funds. Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party did it with pensions in the years from 2007 to 2011 with Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party and again with Fine Gael in 2011. They implemented more taxes on the people in Ireland.

We commemorated 100 years of people who fought for freedom in this country and the same people who fought would turn in their graves to see that the people who said they were standing up for Ireland are now punishing Ireland. They are punishing everyone in Ireland because of their failure to manage money and finances. How dare the Minister even sit in this room on television.

I was a member of our party until I saw the light and how corrupt parties are. There are party lines. Deputies coming from Limerick are supposed to be supporting Limerick and the places where they were elected. They come up here and vote on party lines with a Dublin-based Cabinet. They were not sent from Limerick to Dublin to vote with a Dublin-based Cabinet. They were sent from Limerick to get our fair share of the taxes and the punishments the Government is putting us under and send it back down for the infrastructure in our county. This goes for the Deputies who are representing Limerick city and county. They are elected by the people of Limerick to represent them.

I might not have gone to school for as long as the Minister did or get all of the college degrees he has but one thing I have is education of life. I have been self-employed all my life. I have had to fight to put food on the table for my family like many other self-employed people throughout the country. A total of 51% of the business people in Ireland are in small and medium enterprises. What does the Government do? It puts on tax after tax after tax and bails out everyone. It is all for the big boys. Let us bail them out. Let us give them what they want.

The 37% of the people in rural Ireland pay the highest taxes and we have no infrastructure. We have nothing. The Government stands up here day after day telling its people in Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party throughout the country to look at what it is doing for them. No wonder it is trying to shove everyone into the cities. It knows the game is up in the counties because the people realise how much the Government has left them down for the amount of time they have been in power.

The time is coming for change. The Government will feel that change. Everyone in the Government parties will feel the change. The people will remember how much the Government that was supposed to be here to protect the people of all of Ireland just looked after its buddies in the cities. Not a penny is being given to the counties. Our representatives are elected here and they cannot represent because when they come up they are told what to do. It is follow the leader. They might as well call themselves the sheep party because it is like a flock of sheep following the leader.

That is all they are. They have been told what to do. There might be as well be no Deputies from those parties coming up here from Limerick because there is one person in a Dublin-based Cabinet telling them what to do.

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