Darragh O'Brien (Fianna Fail)

We had a good discussion yesterday and I thank the Minister of State for returning to the House. As I said on behalf of our group, there are many measures in the Finance (No. 2) Bill 2011 that we support. Senator Byrne has outlined a mechanism whereby Government must report back more regularly. As Senator Byrne intimated, it may be onerous to report on it every two months but I do not think it is any harm in the interests of transparency. We all agree on that. The Government has outlined that on a jobs initiative such as this, it will allow a regular report, but I think it should be to both Houses as opposed to a press conference. Earlier today, when discussing another item, we stressed the importance of announcements being made in the Oireachtas, be it in the Dáil or Seanad, instead of at a press conference. We want to encourage the creation of new jobs and jobs growth. There are measures in the initiative that we hope will lead to that. I do not believe the Government has anything to fear - we would be flexible on the two month period - about tying into the Bill the requirement to give regular updates to the Oireachtas on how the measures are performing in different areas. That is crucial.

Some of our other recommendations have been ruled out of order. Will the Minister of State comment on how the Government proposes to review the approved retirement fund aspect? I know the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, indicated he would look at it if he felt that approved retirement funds were not sufficiently taxed already. I put it to the Minister that approved retirement funds are taxed on the basis of a 5% withdrawal. Should someone withdraw no money from the fund, the person is taxed on the basis of 5% of drawings and on the marginal rate of tax for the individual concerned. I made our case yesterday and I am not going to go over all the ground on the basis that we fundamentally disagree on the raid of private pension funds. I suggested that if the Government must levy, it should levy on tax free lump sums across the board, from public and private pensions, PAYE, self-employed proprietary directors. The Government decided not to do that, which is what the Government gets to decide on.

This recommendation tabled by Senator Byrne, if accepted, would show that the Government is willing to come back and report to the Oireachtas on the progress of the jobs initiative. That is the reason our group supports this recommendation.