Seanad debates

Friday, 11 December 2020

Finance Bill 2020: Committee Stage

 

10:00 am

Photo of Rónán MullenRónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

-----and people might have had views as to its artistic or cultural merit. However, the fact is that the artist exemption was designed to protect those who were at risk of poverty. In reverse order, the two legs of the proposed recommendation were as follows: a person who, in any of the three years preceding the assessment, was in receipt of income in excess €100,000. Such a person is not at risk of poverty. That is the merit of that part of it, and it applies to anybody, regardless of whether he or she is a public servant or not. As the Minister of State knows, the first leg of the recommendation concerned serving officeholders - I named the kinds of officeholders involved - or a person in receipt of a pension in excess of €20,000. The reason for limiting it to a public servant in that situation, as opposed to, for example, someone in the private sector who might have a pension of €30,000, is that members of the public sector enjoy particular advantages. I do not need tell the Minister of State the difference between a defined benefit and a defined contribution pension scheme.

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