Charlie McCreevy (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)

The Senator was proved right. To encourage park and ride facilities I improved the scheme the following year to make it more attractive. Up to today, one person has expressed an interest in this area, but we do not know whether that person is going ahead with it. That is one scheme that has not been a success. While Senator McDowell was sceptical about it, most people would have thought that relief was a good idea. There are other reliefs that would be availed of by everybody. For example, the rural renewal scheme in the upper Shannon area — Leitrim, most of Sligo, all of County Longford, and large parts of Roscommon and Cavan — has been a tremendous success in recent years. The seaside resort renewal scheme was introduced by Deputy Ruairí Quinn, the then Minister for Finance. I was Minister for Tourism until December 1994 and the budget was introduced in January 1995. We had been working on that scheme from the previous year and the idea came from my Department. Senator Mansergh has raised doubts about this. When Deputy Quinn introduced it in the budget there were six locations. By the time the Bill reached Report Stage there were 15 or 16 locations because of understandable pressure from various backbenchers to include other places.

I do not wish to deal in detail with stallion relief as I have dealt with this on many occasions. In the Finance Bill 2003, I introduced a provision that allows us to capture information in this area. Until then, it was not possible to capture that information because it was an exempt income. For some reason, successive Governments, including Governments of which Senator Browne's party was a member, opposed any change. I agree with Senator Mansergh who has some experience in this particular business. People will be surprised at the end result. Perhaps one should look at the accounts of the Irish National Stud which is an efficiently run organisation to get some idea of this area of activity. It is like many things in Irish life, including political life, one can get a cheap headline by knocking something like this. It is the kind of bar-stool, non-analytical politics many people favour. We have done better than any other country and are a world leader in the area of horse breeding. We should think long and hard before making any change in that area.

In the 1980s the Commission on Taxation published a five volume report which recommended the abolition of almost every relief under the sun, except one. The only one it favoured keeping was the stallion relief.