Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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8. To ask the Minister for Finance if he will provide the figures on the revenue garnered each year, since their introduction of the household tax, the local property tax, the universal social charge and the pension levy, providing figures and totals for each year; the overall total since their establishment; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17568/15]

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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The Government is doing its level best to trumpet and spin a supposed give-back to workers in the coming budget. My question seeks to put any so-called give-back in the context of how much workers and ordinary citizens have actually lost since 2008 on the various austerity taxes and charges, be it the local property tax, LPT, the universal social charge, USC, the pension levy or the household tax. What are the annual and total figures for all of these austerity charges and taxes?

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I am advised by the Revenue Commissioners that information on receipts by tax head is available on the Revenue Commissioners' statistics website at , under "Revenue Net Receipts by Taxhead on an annual basis" to 2014. As shown on the website, local property tax net receipts were €316 million in 2013 and €493 million in 2014. The Revenue Commissioners has also confirmed that since it took over responsibility for collection of the household charge collection from July 2013, around €2 million was paid in 2013 and €37 million in 2014. These payments are included in the local property tax net receipts figures noted above.

Receipts figures for USC were €3,114 million in 2011, €3,790 million in 2012, €3,930 million in 2013 and €3,647 million in 2014. It should be noted that the 2014 PAYE and USC outturns were affected by adjustments made this year to reapportionment receipts between these two headings to correct an initial estimated allocation used for the period January to June 2013. The Revenue Commissioners have advised me that the 2013 P35s, received in early 2014, show lower USC payments and higher PAYE payments than were allocated in 2013. To offset an automatic reallocation based on these P35 declarations, receipts are being taken out of USC collection throughout 2014. This means that PAYE in 2014 will benefit from a transfer of €407 million and USC will lose an equivalent amount.The net Exchequer effect of the reapportionment is and will remain neutral.

The receipts from the stamp duty levy on pension fund assets introduced in the Finance (No. 2) Act 2011 amounted to €463 million in 2011, €483 million in 2012, €535 million in 2013, and €743 million in 2014. Receipts for 2015 will be published in due course.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Since 2011, up to €13 billion has been raised through the USC, €2 billion through the pension levy and close to €1 billion through the property tax. This has been an enormous gouging of moneys from the pockets of workers over recent years. We were told the property tax would improve local services. The USC was to be a social charge, while we discovered that the pension levy was not a pension levy at all. Essentially, for all that was gouged out of people’s pockets, we got fewer services as well as cuts to remaining ones. What will the Minister do to make up for this fantastic gouging from the pockets of ordinary people over recent years?

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy must be the only the person in the country who is expressing surprise at these figures this morning. Everyone knows we have lost almost a decade because of the policies pursued by the previous Government. We know the country was on the verge of bankruptcy. The banks actually became bankrupt and they had to be bailed out. We could not continue the way we were. If it were not for our colleagues in Europe, the whole country would actually have gone bankrupt. It was because of the money provided by Europe and the International Monetary Fund that the adjustment period could be spread over time to make it sustainable. It is somewhat amazing for the Deputy to express surprise this morning that these impositions were made historically, when they have been the bread and butter of political discourse for the past eight years. He never ceases to amaze me with what he comes up with.

What will I do to reverse them? As I announced and implemented in the last budget, we will not increase any taxes or cut expenditure further. We are slowly unwinding the more penal of the provisions. The pension levy, to which the Deputy pointed in his question, was finished last year, and it was announced that the small residual amount to be collected in 2015 would not be renewed in 2016. We started unwinding income tax and USC receipts last year and are committed to continuing that in the next budget.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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The Minister is right that I and others have been raising these issues for the past several years. It is useful, however, to see what the totals are and how much has been taken from the pockets of people who had no responsibility for the economic crisis. What have they got back for it? Nothing. That puts into context what the Minister claims he will give back to them.

Another point I repeatedly make to the Minister, but one to which he never responds, is this. How is it that workers have lost €14 billion as a result of the austerity charges and taxes while, coincidentally, the super-rich in society have gained about the same amount of money? This is according to The Sunday Timesrich list, as well as the wealth distribution figures produced by TASC, Credit Suisse and Social Justice Ireland. How is it that what has been taken from the pockets of the working people has managed to end up in the pockets of the super-rich?

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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First, we do not live in a society that is class-based or class-divided. This is a republic and we are all workers.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Give us a break. Are those who speculate on the Stock Exchange workers too? I do not think so.

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I know there are some people who do not like to describe themselves as workers. However, to try and present a case that a cohort of people - workers - were the only ones who lost out during the past eight years is a fallacy. Everybody got hammered. The Deputy need only look at the live register.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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No. The super-rich did not. Denis O’Brien did not.

Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Ceann Comhairle)
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Deputy Boyd Barrett, this is Question Time.

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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Look at all the small businesses that closed down.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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What about the millionaires?

Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Ceann Comhairle)
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Deputy Boyd Barrett, will you allow the Minister to answer your question?

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I wish he would answer the question.

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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Deputy Boyd Barrett is building a fictional model of society. He is also selling unsound political currency to the people. He is pretending that out there somewhere there is a mythical enormous group of millionaires hiding under the bushes, and if we only taxed them adequately, everybody else would have to pay no tax. That is the way the Deputy presents it, which is grand. It is the money-tree-in-the-garden school of economics. It is not reality, however.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Is The Sunday Timesrich list a load of nonsense? Does Denis O’Brien not have all that money?