Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Independent Group for tabling this important motion. In County Donegal, as well as in counties Mayo, Sligo, Clare and Limerick, thousands of families are living in defective concrete block homes. For many years, they were stymied and held back from getting justice and a redress scheme that would allow them to rebuild their lives. They did nothing wrong. Due to light-touch regulation and the absence of regulation in this State, they were left with homes that are falling apart.

It took 20,000 people to come to the streets of Dublin, mostly from my home county of Donegal and the other counties I mentioned, to finally make the Government see some sense, yet we still do not have a redress scheme that is fair. What I found most objectionable was Government leadership figures talking about having to pay out billions. They were speaking to the rest of the taxpayers, telling them this would cost billions of their money. There was no talk about injustice or the failure of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments over many years. The intention was basically to divide and conquer citizens and to take away the empathy and solidarity for those families whose lives had been destroyed.

The same Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael leadership figures have choices to make at every single budget. Yesterday, I and other Deputies, including Deputy Pringle, hosted a very important briefing from Oxfam Ireland and Social Justice Ireland. What they revealed was astonishing. Just two people in this country earn more than half the population. The combined wealth of these two people is €15 billion, while the combined wealth of half the population, those at the other end of the spectrum, is €10.2 billion. There is a failure in every budget to put in place a fair wealth tax. Oxfam Ireland believes that a fair incremental tax on the wealthiest, those earning over €4.7 million per year, could raise €8.2 billion every year. The Government complained about a cost of between €2.5 billion and €3 billion for a defective block scheme that would be spread over 20 years. That is approximately €250 million or €300 million per year over a 20-year period. The Government could, however, raise more than €8.2 billion per year from a modest tax on the wealthiest in society. My final point is on the type of wealth these people have. It is not productive and does not benefit the country. It goes into investment funds and so on and floats around the unproductive economy. This proposal makes absolute sense. I ask the Government to be honest when it tries to divide and conquer our citizens in future.

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