Ken O'Flynn (Cork North-Central, Independent Ireland Party) | Oireachtas source

I do not think I have had the opportunity to congratulate the Minister in the House so I will start by doing so and wishing him well in his new role. I wish him great success. I am sure he will make a success of it because I know him to be an honest and decent character.

Is there a doctor in the House? I feel a bit faint because I found myself agreeing with Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett and I may need my pulse taken. Some valid points were made by Deputy Boyd Barrett today, especially in the context of just 100 people and I ask the Minister to look at that. Today we are talking about fairness and redressing an imbalance and injustice in the context of the John O'Meara case. It is unfortunate that we are here today and that we have to reflect on the John O'Meara case and the fact that it went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was dragged out by officials in what is now the Minister's Department. That is regrettable because what we should be doing is looking for the injustices in society and righting them. We should be having success in the House rather than being dictated to. We should not drag a man and his family, or any person in this State, through the courts on technicalities, over and over again, all the way to the Supreme Court. This is a great Bill, which I support but how it got to the floor of the House is regrettable. The injustice has to be redressed.

There are other issues that are not being addressed when it comes to people inheriting. I want to tell the Minister a story about a constituent of mine whose cause I am still fighting for, three years on. She was married in a church back in the 1980s. Unfortunately, the priest on the day, who was meant to register the marriage, did not do so properly. I will send the details on to the Minister. She has been fighting for several years.. She lost her husband three or four years ago. She has two children, aged 16 and 14 and has been fighting continuously, back and forth between various sections of the Department of social welfare because they cannot find a proper marriage licence or certificate. She has supplied photographic evidence and absolutely every other possible piece of evidence to officials in the Department but she has still not received a payment. She rang me the other day and asked if she would qualify for a payment under this new Bill that is going through the House. How sad is that? How sad that the Department is fighting and arguing with people when there is clear and obvious evidence, including a certificate from the Catholic Church, signed by a priest who has since passed away. That is just one example of what is going on in this State and how some people in the Minister's Department are operating. It is not acceptable. People go to the Department of social welfare when they are in trouble, need help and are down on their luck. That is when people go to the Department of social welfare and they should not be given another kick in the teeth. We have to change that sort of mandate or idea within the Department.

I will speak now of another situation of which I am aware that relates to inheritance tax. These things are all linked together. In some cases I am talking about a person that someone spends his or her life with, cohabiting with. In other situations, people live in their own houses but they have a real relationship. They may not be cohabiting but they have a real, genuine relationship, sometimes for years. She lives in her house and he lives in his house, or he and he and she and she, depending on the dynamic. That is all very well but those people are not being taken into account. In fact, I had one case in Cork recently of a lady who inherited her long-term partner's house but was deemed to be in category C, meaning she qualified for a €25,000 tax exemption. Bear in mind that we are addressing issues of injustice here. There are 300,000 childless couples in this country who want to pass on their homes or their funds to nieces or nephews or the stranger down the street who spent their life looking after and helping them. The latter is treated as category C, while a nephew or niece is category B, meaning they have an exemption of €40,000 but are taxed on everything else. There is a huge injustice here. Ken O'Flynn can leave his money to the dog's home and that charity is not taxed. It has an exemption so a cocker spaniel has more rights than a childless or homosexual couple who want to leave money to their nieces or nephews or to somebody else. That is wrong and has to be addressed.

I ask the Minister to change the thinking in his Department. He needs to change the ideology and make the Department more helpful to people and better versed in supporting people and being fair to them. It should not pull up the drawbridge on people. People come to the Department of social welfare when they need help. While this is a very good Bill and I appreciate it being brought before the House, it should not have happened in this manner. We should never have had to wait for the Supreme Court to tell us what is the right thing to do. What the Government, the Minister and his Department need to do is stop looking good and start acting good.

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