Results 301-320 of 33,953 for speaker:Pearse Doherty

Seanad: Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill): Second Stage (19 Dec 2008)

Pearse Doherty: This Finance Bill represents depressing evidence of a Government continuing to sleep-walk through a crisis that is not just threatening the banking system or the construction sector but is also slowly bleeding dry the small businesses that employ most workers and which are the heart of the economy. Even worse is that the hundreds of thousands of working families whose efforts drove this...

Seanad: Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill): Committee and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2008)

Pearse Doherty: Indeed, I am. Property-based tax breaks, especially tax breaks which facilitate the privatisation of our health care system, have made very little difference to the long-term performance of our economy. However, they have resulted in the State forgoing hundreds of millions of euro in revenue. A recent article published in The Sunday Business Post showed that a tax investor who puts...

Seanad: Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill): Committee and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2008)

Pearse Doherty: The recommendation simply requires that the Minister requests a study to be done within six months of the enactment of the Bill. If he is unwilling to give that commitment, I must press the recommendation on this important issue. Recommendation put.

Seanad: Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill): Committee and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2008)

Pearse Doherty: I move recommendation No. 2: In page 12, line 40, to delete "€18,304" and substitute "€37,000". This recommendation aims to increase the number of people who are exempt from the 1% levy. The Government decision to take cash from households at a time when their spending power has been severely diminished is a regressive one. Sinn Féin proposes that the PAYE tax credit be increased by 5%...

Seanad: Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill): Committee and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2008)

Pearse Doherty: In his reply, the Minister of State spoke about the proposal to double the exemption. In reality this levy is not in place until the Bill is enacted. The Government is trying to force low and middle-income earners to pay more. These are people caught in a poverty trap. In my Second Stage speech, I outlined the difficulties that many within these brackets face, including increases in the...

Seanad: Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill): Committee and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2008)

Pearse Doherty: I support this recommendation. The recommendation does not set out what relief should be imposed or if one should be imposed at all. It calls for the Commission on Taxation to produce a report within three months on the dental costs of families with children under 16. The report will come up with findings. The reality is that many families cannot afford this dental work. The longer it...

Seanad: Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill): Committee and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2008)

Pearse Doherty: I have the letter I received from the Cathaoirleach with regard to recommendation No. 3 being out of order but I do not understand the reasons.

Seanad: Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill): Committee and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2008)

Pearse Doherty: I note the reasons given in the correspondence. It is important that this Bill contains a measure to rule out tax incentives for private hospitals and private nursing homes. We know the situation with regard to public hospitals. We heard the announcements in the 2009 service plan on the cuts that will be made which, including the other €400 million, will amount to approximately €1...

Seanad: Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill): Committee and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2008)

Pearse Doherty: The Minister of State quoted the Indecon report. Let us be clear on what Indecon called for with regard to property-based tax incentive schemes. It called for direct public investment to be used as an alternative to property-based tax breaks. This is what my recommendation dealt with. Tax exemptions apply only to very wealthy investors who can offset a large amount of rental income from...

Seanad: Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill): Committee and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2008)

Pearse Doherty: I move recommendation No. 4: In page 52, before section 20, to insert the following new section: "20.—Section 26 of the Finance Act 2008 is repealed.". This section deals with capital allowance for qualifying specialist palliative care units. In layman's terms it is similar to the recommendation ruled out of order. It concerns subsidising private hospices throughout the State. I propose...

Seanad: Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill): Committee and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2008)

Pearse Doherty: On a point of order, if the wrong information was given to the Senator when he asked——

Seanad: Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill): Committee and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2008)

Pearse Doherty: Please allow me to make a point. The wrong information may have been given to Senator Burke as a result of the Minister of State interpreting what he understood the Senator to have asked. The Senator asked on section 15 whether it dealt with a certain issue. If the section did not deal with the Cinderella rule——

Seanad: Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill): Committee and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2008)

Pearse Doherty: I have a couple of points and questions for the Minister and he may clarify my reading of this section. Will stop-over flights, which originate in another state and whose end destination is another state but which stop in Ireland to re-fuel, be subject to this tax? Could the Minister answer this briefly so I can lead on from it?

Seanad: Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill): Committee and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2008)

Pearse Doherty: I have a question on the two rates of €2 and €10 which are dealt with in subsection (2)(b) . I am thinking in particular of Donegal Airport and the flight from there to Glasgow. Subsection (2)(b) refers to: . . . the distance between the place of departure of the flight and the place where the flight ends, at the rate of— (i) €2 in the case of a flight from an airport to a...

Seanad: Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill): Committee and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2008)

Pearse Doherty: Will the Donegal to Dublin flight be €2?

Seanad: Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill): Committee and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2008)

Pearse Doherty: I thank the Minister of State for the clarification on the points I raised. There is a lack of public transport in the areas where smaller regional airports are located. There are no other options, so people use the small airports quite regularly. The Donegal to Dublin connection is in reality being subjected to a €4 levy, rather than a €2 levy. If a person leaves Dublin to go to...

Seanad: Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill): Committee and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2008)

Pearse Doherty: I move recommendation No. 5: In page 122, line 21, to delete "21.5 per cent" and substitute "19 per cent". This recommendation deals with the 0.5% VAT increase that is proposed by the Government in this Bill. It could be argued that a 0.5% change in VAT will make little difference, but we have an option in this Bill to help the retail sector in the State. When the Government announced the...

Seanad: Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill): Committee and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2008)

Pearse Doherty: That is proved by the Government's own figures, which show that there has been a decrease in VAT receipts of €2.1 billion. The Government needs to acknowledge that it is making a mistake and intervene now.

Seanad: Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill): Committee and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2008)

Pearse Doherty: Listening to the Minister's reply, I had a sense of déjÀ vu. When we were in here last year talking about the Government's over-reliance on the construction industry and the need to plan for the time when the bubble would burst, the Government sat on its hands. It only recently recognised how things are. When we talked about the need to do something with the banks, similar responses were...

Seanad: Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill): Committee and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2008)

Pearse Doherty: I support this recommendation. It is very sensible and causes no real cost to the Exchequer. It is only a delay in bringing in the VAT intake. As I said with reference to my previous recommendation, we will be back here to revisit this problem. Senator Quinn's proposal and others, including my earlier recommendation, will be discussed and brought forward by this Government. This is a...