Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The poor widow whose large family has left home will be penalised by this Government simply because she needed a larger farmhouse. To add insult to injury, an exemption will be granted to anybody who purchases a house next year. The unlucky ones like me and, I am sure, many others in these Houses and across Ireland who paid some of the ¤5.5 billion taken in stamp duty between 2000 and 2009 will have to front up the tax even though the average cost of houses was closer to ¤400,000 than the current average of ¤157,000.