Thomas Byrne (Fianna Fail)

This is a positive amendment that recognises that those who paid stamp duty between 2004 and especially during 2007-08, are the people who paid for the Celtic tiger. It was from them that taxes came. Now we are to land those people with an annual charge of €100. This point is very important. The previous Government set the precedent for giving them some kind of rebate or increase for their mortgage interest. I was glad to see the Government enhancing that yesterday but it was my party that recognised the principle. These people paid out a great deal of money and are now being asked to pay again. It is especially galling because a person who built and owns properties that have not been sold does not appear to be liable for property tax in any way. That is completely unjust and there does not appear to be any rationale to it. A property is a property. We are looking to tax properties, as will be discussed with the relevant section.

With houses bought under the affordable homes or shared ownership schemes, one is looking at very vulnerable people. Many of them are in a very peculiar and difficult form of negative equity. With all the clawbacks in place they are in a very difficult situation. Some people came after them, looked at the affordable homes scheme, decided it was too expensive and that they would buy on the open market instead or perhaps not buy at all.

The Government should accept this amendment. It should accept that these people funded us for many years. They are the people who paid the taxes that brought this country to the heights it reached. We should have had a proper taxation system. There are all kinds of allegations about the last Government but the fundamental mistake was that taxes were not levied appropriately. We relied too much on transactional taxes such as stamp duty, capital gains and capital acquisition taxes. We reduced income tax to too low a level and we did not have a property charge.

This Bill is part of the relevant correction. If we consider those people who bore the burden of taxation in those years we should give them, at least for a period, an option on the charge. I do not want the Minister of State to reply citing technical reasons. I do not know whether the word "homes" is defined in the Bill but we can return on Report Stage with a different version if that must be done. I support the spirit of this amendment.