David Norris (Independent)

It cost me €5,000 because it was ten years old when I got it two years ago. I have to pay approximately €1,300 in tax. That seems iniquitous. From a conservation point of view, people should be encouraged to retain older cars like that — good quality cars — which have not exhausted their usefulness. The taxation should, in some measure at least, be related to the value of the car. If one looks at other forms of taxation, one is taxed relative to value. I am taxed on my income. If I have an income of €100,000, I go into a particular tax bracket because I have X amount of money. In the old days, if I had a house which was over a certain value, I would be taxed on it. That principle goes right through the whole tax system.

It is ludicrous that I and many other people in this situation are approaching a point where we pay more in tax than the market value of the car. That is absurd. I remember the give away budgets in which Fianna Fáil romped home because it did things like abolish car tax. However, it gradually crept back until we now have this absurd situation of these huge amounts of tax on cars which are not commercially valuable. That is wrong.

The French Government addressed this situation sensibly in the past couple of years. When this anomaly was drawn to its attention, it removed tax completely from cars and replaced it with one cent on petrol. That has the great advantage of minimising all the bureaucratic inconvenience, the muddle, the prosecutions, the delays, the Civil Service administration and so on. I could not table an amendment because, as the Minister of State knows, the Seanad is not trusted with the purse strings of the State. If I table an amendment which costs money, it will be immediately ruled of out order because of the way the Seanad has been established. I urge the Minister for Finance to look at this issue.

I will be cynical and say that by the time of the next election, this could be a popular issue. The Minister might meet resistance from people who want to sell new cars but there is also a substantial body in the motor industry which sells second-hand cars. Rather than litter the countryside with the corpses of perfectly useable cars, the Minister would make it financially possible for people to continue to drive them.

I raise this issue because I have raised others in this manner with the Minister for Finance, Deputy McCreevy, and have found him to be open-minded. If he does not agree, he will kick it out the window but if he thinks there is the slightest bit of sense or, as Sean O'Casey would say, tither of wit in it, he will look at it. That is all I ask. My proposal would save on wastage, scrappage and so on. It would also mean there was a little more rationale to the way tax is levied on cars. It should be related to age or it should be abolished altogether which would be popular, would minimise bureaucracy, would free up some of these civil servants who the Minister could then ask to go wherever he liked. They could be decentralised all over the place.

The Minister for Finance has, or his predecessors have, in effect, already conceded this principle. There is provision for antique or classic cars; owners of cars in excess of 30 years old pay a marginal, notional tax. However, some of us cannot wait that long. I ask the Minister to consider this issue and I thank the Acting Chairman for allowing me to make this point.