Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I support this amendment. It is imperative that the TSC is applied and distributed to provide urgent relief to households. This amendment would provide for important oversight of the Minister's application of the TSC and the distribution of its proceeds. A report could provide critical insights into how effective the measures were in providing urgent relief to households and how robust enforcement measures were, with a view to improving them in 2024. A report would also be useful to explore the possibility of extending the measure beyond 2022 and 2023. I agree entirely with Deputy Whitmore about the money message. In this amendment, she has learned from the experience of previous occasions and crafted an amendment that was not going to be ruled out of order. I, maybe being a bit more stubborn, tried to take a different approach on this. I would argue that this legislation should be explicit that this money will be used to provide relief for people. I tabled amendments that have been ruled out of order under the same crazy interpretation of the money message.

We are here to debate a solidarity contribution. We in the Opposition want the opportunity, I think understandably, to engage on that legislation to tweak and improve it and to stress-test the Minister of State's argument. Many of the amendments we submitted were ruled out of order based on Standing Orders stating that we in the Opposition cannot raise or reduce revenue. In the context of debating a revenue-raising proposal, that is outrageously frustrating for us.

This is a reasonable proposal. There were many similar amendments, tabled by Deputy Bríd Smith and others. We tabled amendments that were more ambitious and would have gone beyond the 75%, but we will not have an opportunity to discuss that. The amendment before us is a reasonable proposal and while it does not go as far as I would have liked to enshrine conditions for the Government in regard to how to use these windfall gains, I fully support it and think the Government should accept it.

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