Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute on this legislation. I remember going onto Galway County Council in 2014. The council used to then get something like €12 million from the equalisation fund. The property tax then came in that year, and €14.5 million was collected throughout the county. Galway County Council got its €12 million of that amount, while €2.5 million went back to the Exchequer. The equalisation fund in respect of the €12 million went off to Angela Merkel to pay for the bailing out of the banks. That is what the property tax meant to the people in that county; €12 million in that county was taken from ordinary individuals.

There are things I would never have a problem paying a tax on, but I have a real problem paying a tax on a house. First, people must start off and get a mortgage for their house. I call this, basically, a bedroom tax. Many people are struggling to get a mortgage now. As referred to earlier, fees are a major problem. I have heard some Members refer to differences between the cities and the counties. There are people, especially pensioners, whom we must think of tonight, who may have inherited a house located in a large city, such as Dublin, Galway or wherever. Elderly people in such situations are living on the old age pension. To those people, their house is their home and not a major asset. They are going to hand that house to somebody else, who will pay through the nose and probably not be able to afford it.

When a person is building a house today, fees must go to the council, whether in cities or in rural areas. Large fees are being charged for what are supposed to be community services and footpaths and all these types of things.

In rural areas, the community has to do these things itself. We have no footpaths to stand on and no streetlights to go out in, even though the fees are looked for. Thank God we have local group water schemes or co-ops in rural Ireland, for the simple reason that Irish Water charges a fee of €2,500 to join up to the water system.

Now the Government is talking about bringing in a bigger area in this new legislation. The Minister must remember that in farming areas there are sheds at the backs of houses that people keep their fuel in for the winter. There are sheds for cattle or someone might have built a shed for a car. There is a genuine worry about where we are going with all of this and what the reasoning is.

The Government is talking about climate. I looked today at the pumps. The Government raised the carbon tax and it is intending to raise it on a continual basis. Some people in rural areas do not have the offer of a bus service. At the moment, a litre of diesel costs €1.40 at minimum and is closer to €1.44 or €1.45. Does the Minister realise that? What world are some people living in that they do not realise that diesel has gone from €1.05 or €1.10 up to €1.40? Yes, world market oil prices have gone up but there is also the carbon tax increase. The Minister can say that we are changing things and are doing this, that and the other. That is fine but what bus service do these people have? Bus services have been cut in many rural areas, including the Local Link bus that collected elderly people who might only get out one day a week to go for their pension, do a bit of shopping and meet their friends to help them with rural isolation. Damn ye, but they have stopped that now. There is a route now but some people have to go three miles to get to it. Some of these people live on their own and do not have a car. Some of them do not have anyone to bring them from A to B. Now with the new Local Link service it is one town after another. That is it. It is not like it was with the drivers in the old system, in fairness to them. The madness about this is that there are bigger buses now. Before, we had little 16-seaters or 18-seaters that were able to go up the bóithrín, turn at the gate and help people in rural isolation to go out for a day and enjoy themselves. They might only see one person all week and that was the postman if they got a letter.

I cannot fathom the mentality of what we are doing. Think of those elderly people, be they in the city or the countryside. The value of their house might have gone up but that is not worth a damn to them because they are living in the house. It is not about the house. That is where they live and they are going to hand that on like it was given to them. Their incomes are still modest in many cases. We must bear in mind that the PSO levy has gone up many times, electricity has gone up around 15% and for those in cities gas prices have gone up as well. We talk about being a compassionate society and about looking after our elderly. There are young couples who have mortgages around their necks for €400,000 or €500,000. In the likes of Dublin you would not get too plush of a house for that, going by the prices I have seen. Still, we want to screw more out of those people and a lot of them can ill afford it.

I just cannot understand the mentality behind some of these things. The Minister will say it is for X, Y and Z reasons and that we are going to spend more on roads or something else but why do we keep trying to knock money out of people who do not have it? Why do we keep making their lives tougher? We are charging a property tax when most people who have mortgages and young families are struggling. Middle Ireland is struggling to keep going and we are going to make them struggle more by bringing in more legislation to raise the price of what they have to pay for their house. There seems to be a fierce disconnect between what is going on in this country in reality, especially in rural areas, and what is done in here. I ask the Minister to rethink this whole situation because we are going to leave a lot of people struggling, especially our elderly who have given so much to their country.

I would like clarification on garages, sheds for turf and timber and other sheds out the back, especially in farming areas. In older houses in rural Ireland they have what they used to call cow houses - though people might not know what they were - about 40 yd or 50 yd from the house, where farmers used to go out at night to see if the cow was calving. There are hay barns and the other things as well. That issue must be clarified.

We have to look at the whole system, including planning and the expenses that are incurred. That is for the people in the cities as well because this is not about putting one group against the other. This affects people within cities as well. While the value of a property might go up for speculators and people who are renting out their houses like landlords, for the people who want to live in the house, whether it has one, three or ten bedrooms, that is their house. That is their home and their family. That is where they came from and that is what they intend to hand on. I cannot for the life of me understand why we are going to put those people under more pressure.

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