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

I thank the Minister for his response. I sometimes wonder with the reporting of this whether people really understand who is concerned about it and who is bothered by it. It is as if it is all millionaires and billionaires that are somehow going to benefit from this. I keep thinking about a woman just off Johnstown Road in my constituency, who has paid off her mortgage with income after tax. Her husband is a mechanic. She has not had any change in her car since 2007. She has two daughters that she has put through college and supported with their education, who are now earning salaries as nurses and working extremely hard in hospitals in Dublin while living in Wicklow. What she is concerned about is making provision for her family. It is a very primal sort of concern. She has said to me she is not a rich woman, she is not flaithiúlach with her money in any way. She is a woman who has worked hard. She has never received nor sought anything from the State. She has put every penny she has into her family's education and making and providing a home for them. Her concern now is not her daughters' concern at the point of her death, but her reconciliation with herself that she has made provision for them. The questions around inheritance tax deeply upset people. They imagine that there will be some enormous change. People have a deep, primal feeling about how they make provision for their children, and them being stable, and they are concerned about that. That is why this debate is so important.

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