Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I already said in my answer that the Department of Finance has an arrangement with the ESRI to do a full survey of what would be described as wealth. For the first time, the Department is taking steps to have the kind of base the Senator is talking about. We are not doing it for the purposes of introducing a wealth tax. It is useful information to know the distribution of income and wealth across households. It is the kind of data that modern economies have. We are moving into that space. The work is about to commence and the ESRI has already been commissioned to do it.

On the other issues, as I said before, in the absence of a database and in the absence of clarity on Sinn Féin's own proposals, it is not a question of bad manners; if we could cost it, we would do so.