Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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I ask the Minister to engage in this process in an open way and to consider genuinely the sensible proposals tabled by members of the Opposition. The way that the House has been treated in terms of this Bill and the legislation that it amends, which the House passed before Christmas, is a disgrace. Many genuine issues need to be teased out in some detail. For example, we will spend the next three days debating the Finance Bill in committee in a measured, considered and professional way. Why can we not apply the same level of responsible parliamentary behaviour in dealing with this Bill, which affects every household?

The Minister has shown no willingness to date to consider any of our amendments. I hope that he will prove me wrong. It is 7.05 p.m., this debate will adjourn at 7.30 p.m., it will resume at 9 p.m. and conclude at 10.30 p.m. We have less than two hours to debate 67 Opposition amendments to one of the most important Bills that the House will consider in this term.

Key issues that I will raise during the course of the couple of hours available to us are those of ability to pay and fairness. Adequate consideration has not been given to the needs of people who are struggling with mortgage arrears or are trapped in negative equity, who have paid high levels of stamp duty or development contributions to local authorities in recent years or who, through no fault of their own, are in low-income households. The thresholds that have been set are inadequate, even for deferrals.

Clearly, the Minister is not for turning on the overall principle of introducing a property tax. Be that as it may, all sides of the House have an obligation to seek to improve the measures that the Minister is introducing. I do not doubt that, having read through all of the amendments tabled by a variety of Deputies, some would make the property tax fairer if implemented. They would introduce in a meaningful way an assessment of a person's ability to pay and take into account the person's other obligations and commitments.

This is all that I will say at the outset. We have limited time. I want this to be a meaningful debate in which we deal with the amendments tabled. I hope that the Minister is of a mind to accept the more sensible amendments.

Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
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The crushing by the Government of adequate time for debating this property tax compounds the legislation's lack of democratic credibility. The reality is that the property tax has not a shred of democratic legitimacy. Fine Gael, the majority party in government, categorically ruled out a property tax in its 2011 election manifesto when it claimed that "a recurring residential property tax on the family home is unfair". The Labour Party also ruled out the property tax as now to be implemented. Therefore, we have a blatant perversion of truthfulness by the two Government parties in front of the ordinary people of this State in coming here and doing an about-face in implementing this savage austerity tax, which will quickly grow to €1,000 per annum when combined with the water tax.

Next week, the Revenue Commissioners, who have been given responsibility by the Government to implement this odious tax, will send nearly 2 million letters to houses. There should be a wholesale rejection by the majority of householders or everyone out there of any demand by Revenue to make returns or give any information whatsoever. There should be a mass boycott of all aspects of this illegitimate tax being undemocratically foisted on the people. A massive movement of people power and worker power is needed to overturn this major attack on living standards and on people of middle and low incomes on behalf of the bailout agenda of the European financial institutions and on the diktats of the troika.

If 1 million households or more organised, refused to co-operate, boycotted the tax and brought their considerable opposition to the parties in government in a campaign of political public pressure, they could break the tax. It should be overturned. As an illegitimate law, it is legitimate for people to defy it through mass people power and worker power between now and the demand for the returns at the end of May. If the Government dares to deduct a single cent from social welfare payments or workers' wages, opposition should be carried through with industrial action in workplaces. This is the only legitimate response to a tax that has no democratic credibility and provides for a significant and unsupportable attack on the living standards and incomes of the poor, the unemployed and low and middle-income workers.

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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Deputy Catherine Murphy is next. Six Deputies wish to contribute. We are on section 1 on the definition.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)
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That there is such an inadequate amount of time is the nub of the problem. Some of us went to the trouble of framing amendments in good faith, but there is no good faith in dealing with them. Even the Title of the Bill belies its intent, as there is nothing local about the tax. It is not raised locally, the money spent will only replace the money withdrawn from the local government fund and no additional services will be provided to people.

It is radically different from what happens in other countries in that local property taxes are raised locally. People know what they are paying for, which is a world away from what is being proposed in this case.

Issues are going to jump up and bite us, so to speak, because they have not been properly considered. People have made modifications to their homes to accommodate disabled persons - with or without a local authority grant. In some cases people had to wait so long for a grant that a local community has fund-raised to allow the modification to be made. Such a family will not qualify on the grounds that it did not get a grant simply because it would have had to wait for too long. There is a world of difference in terms of how local authorities administer the grant process. That requires scrutiny for a particularly vulnerable cohort.

There are major difficulties with what has been proposed on pyrite-affected homes. A household might have to expend three times the amount required in property tax just to have the house tested to prove pyrite levels are sufficiently high to require exemption. Leaving aside the principle of a property tax, we have identified a number of issues that will be problematic in terms of the fair application of the tax. Not having sufficient time to debate the issues will result in future problems. We cannot ignore the fact that according to the credit union movement, 1.8 million households have only approximately €100 of disposable income per month on which to live. A significant cohort will simply not be able to pay the tax. It is wrong to allow interest to build on deferred payments. I will leave it at that. I hope there will be an opportunity to speak on some of the issues.

Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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There is no doubt what we are doing is an affront to democracy. Much has been said previously about this evening’s business. This is the second piece of legislation on the property tax and the Minister has done exactly the same thing with it as was done with the previous legislation. I accept that the lead spokesperson had time to debate the issue on Second Stage but we want to get into the nitty-gritty of the Bill on Committee Stage. We are dealing with section 1, which relates to the Title because we are aware that we will not get to the amendments we have tabled that cover many of the other sections.

The Minister is aware of Sinn Féin’s position on the tax. We are completely opposed to it. We make no bones about it. We do not say it is the wrong time or the wrong tax; it is simply our position that a family home tax should not be imposed on the people of this State. Sinn Féin is committed to having the tax repealed. We believe the only way for people to avoid paying the tax is to repeal it. I will continue to try to enlist support for such a measure both inside and outside this Chamber so that there is a popular demand for it and that in future we will have a Government that will repeal this legislation which will have such a drastic effect on people across the State.

A property tax will affect people’s disposable income, well-being and in some cases, mental health. I received a phone call to my office from someone in mortgage distress. A property tax goes to the nub in terms of mortgage distress because there is nothing in the Bill that will bring any alleviation to the 180,000 people who are suffering through mortgage distress and who face various types of turmoil. A member of my office staff told me about a phone call she received where the husband recounted to her that his wife is crying all the time because they cannot get out of the turmoil they are in due to mortgage distress. They are preoccupied with the thought of losing their home or of not being able to pay their bills and all of the pressure that brings to bear on people. He told the member of staff who took the call that one night he went upstairs and gathered whatever coins he could find together and gave his wife the money to get something for herself.

We previously discussed mental health issues, people taking their own lives and the effects various decisions have on society. There is no doubt the Minister will not bat an eyelid when he gets his letter from the Revenue. Neither will the Taoiseach. How could they on the salaries they receive? It is just another cheque that has to be written and another letter to be posted to the Revenue. It means nothing to them. It will not put them up or down. However, for the vast majority of people the tax is a big consideration they will face in the coming days and weeks. There is no doubt that from Monday on, when the postman starts to deliver the letters from the Revenue, houses across the State will dread the rattle of the letterbox heralding another bill on the family. Such families have probably been sitting around the table doing the sums on how they can afford this or that, which bill they will prioritise and which one they will ignore and, hopefully, catch up on later. The letter will be accompanied with the harshness of the Revenue’s stamp. If a person is not in a position to pay the tax and they cannot get a deferral, then the big boys in government will come after them. They will come after them through their social welfare payment, if they are unemployed and lucky enough to be in receipt of a social welfare payment. They will come after them if they are a farmer depending on REPS payment or area aid so that the income they were expecting to get to ensure stock are fed during the bad winter will be reduced. Worse again, Revenue will dip into their bank account and the money they thought was there to pay for their mortgage or certain bills will be taken by the State because, come hell or high water, the Government will get its pound of flesh.

This is an unfair and unjust tax. There are different ways to bring in revenue. The Minister knows that as well as I do. In the context of bringing in additional taxation, every option will affect someone and it will hurt some people more than others. I deplore the approach being taken that every single person who has a roof over his or her head must pay a tax. The tax is not based on the value of one’s home because for many, it is a charge on a liability. It is a charge on debt. The Minister is aware that people are swimming in a pool of debt. They are drowning in a sea of debt. The Minister knows the figures as well as I do. Properties have lost 55% of their value in recent years. Just this week an auction in Dublin included a property in Donegal. I do not know the owner but I am sure the mortgage on the property was more than €25,000, which was the reserve price for the apartment in Letterkenny. The apartment did not even sell. People are suffering under massive debt and the property tax will add to the burden.

I feel like I am talking to a brick wall. I genuinely cannot get over how quickly the Government lost touch. Fianna Fáil lost touch gradually and the situation probably accelerated in the boom years when it lost complete control. The Government is in office two years. It is two years ago since the Government entered this Chamber to hang out its brightest colours. Two years later its brightest colours are coming in the form of envelopes that will be posted by the Revenue through hundreds of thousands of doors that will bring nothing but misery, hardship, pain and more suffering to individuals from whom the Government promised to lift the burden and deal with the terrible situation it inherited.

The legislation is flawed. In my Second Stage speech I mentioned that some aspects of the Bill are positive and others are negative.

Even the types of exemptions that the Minister is trying to trumpet as a huge success are far from it. Take the pyrite exemption, for example. Homes affected by pyrite will be exempt, but who is kidding who? If one looks at the section of the original Bill dealing with the chargeable value of a house, the legislation says that it amounts to what one is deemed to be able to get as a fair market value if one was to sell one's house on the liability date. If I own a house affected by pyrite, does the Minister think I will get anything for it? It will not be sold because there is no value in it. An apartment in Letterkenny which is not affected by pyrite would not be sold for €25,000. A house affected by pyrite has no value at this point in time. Therefore, giving an exemption to a house affected by pyrite makes absolutely no sense because 2%, 10%, 50% or even 90% of the value of a house affected by pyrite is still zero. It will not sell in the market today so giving it an exemption is meaningless. It is an attempt by the Government to dress this up and pretend it is tackling the issue of the tens of thousands of homes that are affected by pyrite.

Another issue of concern arises with regard to the section dealing with homes adapted for persons with disabilities. We will not even reach that section of the Bill but it is an area about which I am genuinely passionate, on the basis of my own family experience with a late uncle of mine. His family had to adapt their house many years ago, which cost a lot of money, and the community responded to their need. I have been in many homes where adaptions were necessary. The section of the Bill dealing with such homes contains a fig leaf which will addresses the concerns of some people but not others because it is based on a grant having been availed of that was means tested and which covered a portion of the value of the work carried out at the time. It is mean and cruel.

I will cite one particular situation and I am sure the person concerned will not mind me mentioning it. A fisherman from one of the islands off the coast of Donegal had a terrible accident. When I started out in politics, we had a fund-raising campaign to help pay for an adaption to his house. I know him and have visited him a number of times over the years. His house has been adapted and he lies there, paralysed. His mother looks after him all of the time and has suffered as a result of cuts inflicted by this and the previous Governments. That adaption had to be made. It was not done because the mother wanted another room and an extra bathroom. It was done because her son had to be cared for, and had the adaption not been made, he would have had to be put into long-term residential care. Yet the Minister, with this legislation, still will not address that family's concerns because it is based on the family's income at the time. Furthermore, if they did not apply for a grant at the time, they do not get an exemption from the property tax. These are issues that we will not even get to touch on this evening, although I appreciate being allowed to mention them now. It is really annoying that, despite our complete and utter opposition to this legislation, and despite the fact that we have tabled amendments which are sensible and which, if the Minister had time to discuss and thrash them out, he might have a second look at, that is not going to be facilitated because the Minister and his Cabinet and Government colleagues have voted to quash debate on this legislation.

Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party)
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I will be brief seeing as we have very little time. I must say there is a sickening feeling of déjà vu about this session. It is a carbon copy of the charade that went on here before Christmas, where the Minister sat, nodding off while this side of the House was allowed vent its spleen a bit, nobody was present from the Government benches and then they came in like sheep later on to foist the original Bill on us. Here we are again only a matter of weeks later. It is galling to have been here on Friday and to have seen a line of backbenchers, particularly from Fine Gael, shedding crocodile tears about houses in Dublin, houses with pyrite and people on low incomes. These are the very issues around which we have tabled amendments tonight but which we are not going to get a chance to discuss in any meaningful way. This spectacle makes an absolute mockery of the legislative process. I am not actually interested in playing the game in here because the reality is that this battle or game will be sorted out outside this House. People will not put up with the waffle and rubbish that is coming out of this place because they simply cannot afford to pay what is being put on their shoulders. However, I do want the opportunity to expose Government backbenchers tonight who made false promises on the issue of pyrite, who shed crocodile tears for people on low incomes but who passed legislation that is more draconian than anything else on our Statute Book to allow the Government to put its paws into the pockets of low-paid workers.

Obviously, the Bill before us tonight is designed to take some of the sting out of the original proposition but it fails miserably in this regard precisely because it makes no reference whatsoever to ability to pay. The Minister's party fought the election with a manifesto which told voters that it would not bring in a home tax because people who own homes can be asset rich but cash poor or they can be young people struggling with negative equity. The Minister has rewarded all of those people for their votes by imposing the opposite of what his party said it would do. We have tabled amendments tonight to take account of those people and to exclude them from the net.

Obviously, we do not agree with a home tax at all. It is patently unfair, particularly when the Minister had many other avenues for raising money. He could have increased corporation tax just a tad. He could have slightly increased income tax on the high earners and he would have got just as much, if not more, as he will from imposing this further austerity on ordinary people. The Government chose not to do that. I want the Minister's backbenchers to have the choice to vote on our amendments tonight. I would like to know, before this session breaks, where the amendments stand. We do not know, at this stage, which of our amendments are being allowed and which are being ruled out of order. The least the Minister can do is give us the respect of allowing us to know that before we come back after Private Members' business.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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This Government should be utterly ashamed of itself for what it is doing and the way in which it is trampling on the democratic process. At the best of times, huge numbers of people in this country have little respect for politics and for this institution. What the Government is doing, contrary to the promises it made prior to taking office, is bringing this institution into further disrepute. If there was any hope for conventional politics, it is fast disappearing down the drain because of the utter, deliberate, manipulative and smug cynicism that accompanies the way this Government does business, particularly in the last six months or so. Government Deputies smile as they ride roughshod over what should be proper democratic oversight and scrutiny of legislation that will affect pretty much every citizen in this State and which will impose further suffering on hundreds of thousands of families who cannot take any more. The fact that the Government will not allow this legislation to be discussed and debated properly or allow Deputies from all sides of the House to put forward amendments and alternative proposals is utterly shameful.

The Government does not want a proper debate on this Bill for the same reason it did not want a proper debate on the original Bill before Christmas and does not want one on the Water Services Bill, which will be guillotined next week, namely, that its claims that it is fair and progressive would not withstand any serious examination or scrutiny. The Bill is not fair nor progressive. It is cruelly unfair and seems designed to be so. Despite the fact that this has been debated a great deal on the national airwaves and questions have been asked repeatedly by the Opposition, the Minister refuses to answer the most basic question about this Bill. How will people who are not able to pay their mortgage pay this tax?

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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Deputies have spent another half hour making Second Stage speeches and yet they are objecting to how we are taking Committee Stage.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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The Minister has made a mockery of it already. What is the point?

Tom Hayes (Tipperary South, Fine Gael)
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We are moving on.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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It is a farce.

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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It is another series of Second Stage speeches.

Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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It is a joke. What is the point?

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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Committee Stage is to improve legislation.

Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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Come on.

Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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How many amendments were tabled by the Minister?

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I have listened to the Deputies.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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What have you heard?

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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Everything in the Bill arises because I was listening to the Deputies and we had that debate before Christmas. Every amendment is to ease the situation as suggested by Deputies.

Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party)
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The Government is not listening.

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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Deputies are not prepared to have a proper Committee Stage.

Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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The Minister is grandstanding.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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The Minister could remove the guillotine.