Seanad debates

Wednesday, 6 March 2013

Finance (Local Property Tax) (Amendment) Bill 2013: Second Stage

 

12:50 pm

Photo of Kathryn ReillyKathryn Reilly (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will not go into the legislation in detail given that we do not have enough time to debate it. We have tabled substantive amendments for Committee and Report Stages but we know we probably will not reach all of those with only 45 minutes allocated for the debate on the Remaining Stages.

Last December we saw the previous Bill rushed through the Oireachtas in a shameful way. There is a disregard for the democratic processes of the two Houses and the job we were mandated to do as legislators by our constituents, whether they be councillors or ordinary people who elect Members to the other Chamber. That is nothing short of a disgrace and demonstrates that the election promises made in the programme for Government in terms of political reform have been abandoned.

Given the limited time available there is not much point in dealing with the legislation in a substantive way. Instead, I will use this time to remind the Government parties, Fine Gael and the Labour Party, of the promises they made to the electorate in the general election of 2011, which is only two years ago. In the Fine Gael manifesto, the document it used to secure support from the voters, there was an explicit commitment not to introduce a property tax before 2014. Pages 59 and 60 of the manifesto decried what they called the Fianna Fáil and Labour Party annual recurring residential property tax, and that was decried as unfair. It said it would not introduce such a tax. The Minister's colleagues in the Labour Party made a similar promise on page 16 of their manifesto, the document they used to convince voters to support them. They said the time was not right to introduce a site valuation tax and that any such tax could only be introduced after 2014, and must include exemptions to deal with those in negative equity and those who paid massive amounts of stamp duty.

The Fine Gael and Labour Party property tax election promises were, for people, central parts of the election campaigns, and people did vote on the basis of those proposals. However, on the second anniversary of the foundation of the Government, and in the past half hour, the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste made their respective speeches about the two year anniversary, the Government is now voting through the second item of legislation introducing the annual recurring property tax legislation with no exemptions for those unable to pay or those in negative equity, no recognition of the massive stamp duty payments made by many homeowners, and no mechanisms to deal with the urban-rural variations in property prices.

As for Fianna Fáil, as other Senators mentioned earlier, it is difficult to listen to its Members opposing this legislation.

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