Katherine Zappone (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I second the recommendation Senator Quinn has put forward. As Senator Healy Eames has just identified, there are issues around the workability of this proposal, and I too would have concerns about the workability of imposing age limits on parental support for children. Revenue has cited some extreme cases of parents gifting tracts of land or expensive cars to their children, and so on, and I suppose some of them may do that - I do not know because I do not live in those circles. However, I do not believe we can build a tax system on extreme cases which are, I am sure, dwarfed by the overwhelming number of legitimate instances of parents helping out their children.

It seems to be fundamentally a badly thought out proposal which lacks proportionality. Anne Corrigan, a tax expert at Arthur Cox, has come out very strongly against this proposal. Like her, I would have concerns about the danger that the Minister's proposals will simply undermine the integrity of the tax system because it is likely to be widely ignored in practice and perhaps goes too far. The purpose of our recommendation is to reinstate the current wording of section 82 of the Capital Acquisitions Tax Consolidation Act 2003 but also, in doing that, to build in a reference to the children of civil partners, which I know is part of the intent of this section.