Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. This is the first time I have addressed him since he became Minister for Finance and I offer my congratulations. I am not here to give the Bill a hammering but there are a couple of points I would like to make.

First and foremost, I want to raise the issue of the USC, on which Senator Boyhan made a speech this morning. It came in as a short-term tax to help with a specific issue but it has hung around and it really needs to go. Perhaps it could not have gone in one fell swoop, but it would have been better if we had removed those on the bottom level of income completely from it. I hope that when the Minister is back here next year as Minister for Finance, he will address me, having been elected as well, and tell me he has totally written off the USC.

One of the things I would like to have taken care of is the philanthropy issue. I am looking to the future to an extent. We have a number of highly efficient incubation centres throughout the country, similar to the PorterShed in Galway. We need to give serious tax incentives to philanthropists to come in and spend their money on building these small indigenous industries, so I ask that something is done in this area. I believe the Minister and his partners in government would be committed to it.

The Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, is in the Visitors Gallery. There is an issue I have been on about for some time, namely, funding for cyber awareness and cybersecurity education and training. Cyber Ireland took up the mantra from me in regard to ring-fencing €1 billion of multi-annual funding for the whole area of cyber training, cybersecurity and the setting up of security centres. I know it is slightly outside the Bill but the money will come from the Department of Finance to do that.

There is another issue that we need to look at. Some of the things that were brought in as a result of FEMPI in 2012 and 2013 were brought in without any serious thought. For example, class K PRSI, which, as Minister, Deputy Leo Varadkar removed for county councillors, still exists for Members of this House and members of the Judiciary. A case came to me the other day where a man paid class S for his spouse, who works part-time in his company, but it was credited as class K by the Department. We have to try to sort out these anomalies and see how they can be fixed.

The Minister and I spoke a long time ago about the issue of abatement of pensions. This is fine if someone is coming out of a public service job where they were earning €150,000 a year before retirement, but if someone is coming out as a private soldier, for example, it is outrageous that we would not allow such a person to keep the pension. I always believed it was theft of a property right. When the Minister is back here, I ask him to look into that and perhaps the next Finance Bill can sort it out for us.

Other than that, we are awash with money. It would be nice to see money put into serious infrastructure projects, and one of those is light rail for Galway city, which would be a tremendous investment on behalf of the State. I will not be going to Galway looking for votes for the Dáil.