Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

They have made fortunes on the backs of vulnerable citizens, many of whom have been crippled by property tax. They have had the red carpet rolled out for them. They are the same vulture funds which refuse to come before the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach. Why will they not do that? What do they have to hide? We reward them by letting them avail of these tax loopholes.It is crazy. We have shown how the local property tax can be abolished. We have included it in all our fully-costed alternative budgets. This amounted to €445 million in the planned 2018 budget. It can be done, we have shown how. It is a failed tax. Its supporters are trying to reform it so that it is no longer what it was meant to be. The allocation process is so skewed that one cannot really call it a local tax - and it is not a local tax - and now the two main parties do not want it to be a property tax. It is merely another tax being levied regressively, including on those who cannot afford it and those who are already struggling under mountains of debt.

Sinn Féin continues to call for this tax on this debt to be abolished and have demonstrated how this can be done. I ask the Minister of State to reconsider this. It is often the case that the little people are taxed, those who cannot move or shift things around and cannot escape it. I ask that the Government look again at alternatives to the property tax in this year's budget, and consider how it might be scrapped altogether. I ask the Government that it should please not use the excuse of local government reform. Local government is starved of funds but this matter is in no way connected to local government reform.