David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am in two minds as to whether to support the Fianna Fáil motion. I probably will because it is half a loaf and that is better than nothing. However, if it was really the republican party it claims to be, it would go for total abolition of the local property tax.

It astonishes me there was such a row about the water rates. There is a very clear argument from central Government for water rates and for the establishment of Irish Water. Water does not come straight from a cloud into a tap; it has to be stored, treated and delivered, and these are all clear costs. However, if I look at the history of Ireland - if I look at figures like James Fintan Lalor, Gavan Duffy and Parnell - they all fought against this kind of thing because it is nothing other than rack-renting. Under the 19th century system, if an Irish citizen dared to improve their property, the rent went up. That is one hell of a disincentive.

I will talk from my own personal experience. Luckily, I can still afford to live in the house to which gracious reference was made, and which won celebrity home of the year. Let me say that this took 40 years to achieve and hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of my income were spent on that, because it was my only hobby. It is one of the ideals of this city to preserve the Georgian architecture. While the city authorities were laying waste to Georgian buildings all over Dublin, in my own little way in North Great George's Street, through my own house, through the James Joyce Centre, through the 12 other houses with which I was positively involved and through the creation of the North Great George's Street Preservation Society, I was doing the job of these people. What is the reward? To have a tax slapped on, just like in the 19th century.

We are told the primary purpose of local property tax is to provide funding for local services. What local services? Perhaps the Minister of State can explain what local services we get. We pay for the roads through car tax, which is also totally idiotic. I drive a very old car and it costs me as much every year to tax and insure it as it did for me to buy it because the Government will not see the sense of the polluter pays principle. The Minister in charge in a previous Parliament agreed with me that the polluter pays principle was the way to go, and one would pay the tax on the petrol. That is the obvious way to go but they will not do it. Therefore, the roads are provided for through road tax and, with regard to other services, we used to get the bins collected by the corporation. They were reasonably well collected and people knew where they were, and they were all collected at the same time, not in the middle of the night by half a dozen fly-by-night companies, which, by the way, engaged quite recently in the Mafia tactics of burning out each other's lorries. We do not really know where the profits go from these companies. That was a great one. How about taxing their profits? To repeat, we are not paying for the roads as that is done through car tax, and we pay through the nose for our bins. Therefore, what do we get for it? Very little.

The Fianna Fáil motion states: "Fine Gael wrongly diverted 30 per cent of the revenue in 2014 to Irish Water". Therefore, we are paying our property tax to prop up Irish Water. Hello. Is anybody out there listening? I am not sure.We come to the Government's amendment. My really decent and lovable friend, Senator Paddy Burke, said it was a great motion but then went and deleted the whole bloody thing. Oh God, Mother Ireland you are rearing them yet.

The motion states that the objective of the local property tax is to broaden the tax base and replace some of the revenue from transaction-based taxes with an annual recurring property tax to provide a stable and secure source of income for local authorities. They are scraping around to see where they can get the money to fund local resources. Had the Government had the wit to tax the vulture funds, it would have the money. Giving the vulture funds charitable status was a brilliant coup. Nobody could possibly have anticipated that. If people were dreaming up what they could do that would be the most ludicrous thing possible, giving charitable status to vulture funds or, as I call them, vampire funds would be one. The motion has the gall to say that the LPT is fair and equitable as the owners of the most valuable properties pay the most. What about income?

I restored my house and spent huge amounts of money on it and I am very glad I did. Meanwhile, my income from Seanad Éireann has gone down by 50%. It is half of what it was before the crash because we had the cuts that everybody got, which is fair enough. Uniquely to us, the long service increment was ended. Being in Seanad Éireann is the only job in which one gets no long service increment whatsoever. That was a bright idea, which would save the country thousands of millions and billions. The money involves was a few grand that was given to half a dozen people in either House. It was a lot of rubbish and cosmetic nonsense.

The Civil Service was cute about hedging around the small and large allowances we got. Charlie McCreevy gave very generous allowances for nothing at all. Nobody knew what they were for. They were to compensate us for not taking his series of wage agreements. There was cash into one's hand. The same bloody civil servants had payments streamed into their income. They are not subject to the same thing. After 32 years and half a dozen elections, I earn exactly the same as someone who was nominated without an election and hardly shows a face in the House. The phrase used was "fair and equitable".

A review was conducted by Dr. Don Thornhill, whom I never met and never heard of. He was involved in the design of the tax. It is wonderfully independent and marvellous that the Government got the man who designed the tax to review it. Of course he is going to say that he thinks it is wonderful and it was a clever idea and he will wonder who thought of it. Has the Government ever heard of such a thing as independence? It certainly does not jump out at me from the speech.

The people want the property tax to be abolished as it is grossly unfair and harks back to a situation of rack-renting. We are talking about property tax when so many people cannot afford a home for financial reasons. We should ensure everybody in the State can afford a home in which they can be comfortable. I salute Sinn Féin for its stand against property tax. That is the way forward and an election winner. If Sinn Féin is going to go into coalition with Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil, it should make that a condition.