Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)

The option is also open to people to pay weekly as opposed to paying it off in a single go. On the choices that are there, to deal with the options put forward by Deputy Doherty, we differ and we will do so respectfully much of the time. On the point he made about the third rate of income tax, the third rate of income tax would be a rate of income tax that we would charge to people who would be high earners, but they are the same high earners who play a valuable role, for example in bringing foreign direct investment to our country. I know it is a difficult argument to make at times but we want Ireland to be competitive.

We want to have a country in which large employers want to be, and one of the issues we have to consider for that is having levels of personal taxation that are competitive. We already have one of the most progressive personal tax systems within the OECD. The more a person earns, the higher the level of tax he or she pays, to the degree that we may even have a high degree of reliance on the income tax that higher income earners pay.

With regard to consultants, I understand this is a decision on pension amounts. It is a decision on which different Deputies will have different views but, for example, if we wish to retain hospital consultants in our system and keep them working in our public hospitals, I have to accept that an issue raised by some of them is how their pensions are taxed. These are people who provide very important public services our hospitals depend on. It becomes an issue when we need to recruit and retain people to lead really important public service organisations.

These are choices. They are choices we differ on. We do not make these decisions because we are trying to protect those on high incomes. We frequently make these decisions because those on high incomes play really important roles leading large organisations which are important to our public services. They perform important public services themselves. With regard to taxation, we already have a very progressive tax code here in Ireland and must be mindful that any decisions we make in respect of asking those on high incomes to pay even more, while I know it can be popular, can have effects on how our country is perceived and on the retention and attraction of jobs and investment in Ireland.

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