Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to pick up on the issue of ability to pay and speak about valuations of which I have some knowledge. That will be a huge issue. In terms of ability to pay, which is what the amendment is about, some people paid their stamp duty up-front as part of their mortgage and therefore every month they paid back that stamp duty in their mortgage payment which they gave to the Government and which it took. It is a form of double taxation.

In terms of how people will do their own valuations, it will be a nightmare for the Government. It will put the ¤100 household charge into the shade, so to speak, because having been a valuer I know that if we ask people to value their own houses it will not work because various issues arise in that regard.

If one is living in Limerick and a farmer down the road has sheds all around his house, who would buy that farmhouse on its own with sheds around it? That is one of the issues that has not been thought out. The issue comes down to one's ability to pay the tax. Ability to pay is what one has in terms of one's income and not how much one's house is worth.

We all know that the abolition of the property tax in 1977 was the wrong step. It had huge consequences and it took a number of years to filter through the system but now we are taking an equally wrong measure at the wrong time in that we are foisting this tax on people who do not have the ability to pay it. Not everybody will be unable to pay it but many people who paid stamp duty in the past ten years feel they have already paid their property tax and that they pay it every month in their mortgage repayment. Account is not taken in the legislation of whether people have lost their jobs since they purchased their properties. All those are issues in determining one's ability to pay. The abolition of the property tax in 1977 was the worse taxation measure decision and it probably had the worse consequences in the 1980s of any measure taken. When people look back on this measure in a few years this decision to start taxing a depressed housing market with no account being taken of people's ability to pay will be considered the worst thing that could have been done in terms of taxation.

I do not believe the Minister was here when Senator Crown offered to pay more in income tax rather than pay this tax because that takes account of ability to pay. The Minister spoke about the Government not wanting to be seen to be taxing jobs and I understand that issue but this measure boils down to one's ability to pay. People have paid stamp duty on their property and they are in financial difficulty. Tens of thousands of people in different categories will find it very difficult to pay this tax. The Bill, which I read last weekend, does not take into account the exceptional circumstances in which people find themselves. We are in a very dire economic situation in terms of revenue generation but the introduction of this property tax at this time will make a dire situation disastrous.