Finance (No. 2) Bill 2026: Second Stage

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." We are here today to begin our consideration of the Finance Bill (No. 2) 2026, which gives legislative effect to the taxation measures announced in budget 2027, along with other necessary changes to our tax code. On 6 October, the Government announced tax policy changes with a total cost of €1.6 billion. Budget 2027 was framed against a backdrop of significant global uncertainty but underpinned by the continued strength of the Irish economy. With record employment, sustained economic growth and budget surpluses forecast for both this year and next, this Bill strikes a careful balance between supporting people with the cost of living today, investing in our future prosperity and strengthening our public finances for the challenges ahead. The Government has a strong and consistent track record of supporting those most in need when they need it most. The measures contained in this Bill are no different. The Bill provides a package of income tax measures to support households and working people, including increases to standard rate income tax bands, personal tax credits and the USC threshold, alongside an enhanced rent tax credit for 2027 and 2028. It also provides additional supports through childcare services relief, rent-a-room relief, microgeneration income and third level education fees. Together, these measures will help workers and families to retain more of their hard-earned income and ease the day-to-day costs they face. This Bill goes beyond supporting people today. It also puts us in a stronger position to build the Ireland we need for tomorrow, by helping more people onto the property ladder and bringing more homes into use. The Bill enhances the help-to-buy scheme by increasing the maximum relief available to qualifying purchasers, helping more families take the first step towards homeownership. It also expands rent-a-room relief to qualifying auxiliary dwellings, giving homeowners greater flexibility and helping them to make better use of existing housing. Alongside these measures, the Bill introduces further changes to the residential zoned land tax, improving how the tax operates and helping to bring more land forward for housing development. A particularly important measure is the introduction of a new derelict property tax. Dereliction is a scourge on towns and communities across this country. Properties lying empty and falling into disrepair serve neither the people who need homes nor the communities around them. By combining the expertise of local authorities with Revenue's capacity to administer and enforce taxation, this measure will help to bring derelict properties back into use, creating more homes and breathing new life into towns across Ireland. The Bill also takes an important step towards helping Ireland to move from a nation of proud and prudent savers to one where more people can benefit from the opportunities that investment offers. Through the introduction of the new savings and investment account, the public will have access to a simple and accessible way to invest. This will provide people with a new opportunity to build their financial future, while helping to develop a stronger culture of investment in Ireland. Unlike many of our European neighbours, Ireland’s fiscal position remains strong, but we cannot take that strength for granted. Our ability to support people depends on maintaining a strong economy, supporting Irish businesses and ensuring Ireland remains an attractive and competitive place to invest. That is why this Bill introduces a number of measures to encourage investment, reward entrepreneurship and support businesses to grow. It reduces the tax rate on life assurance products, investment funds and certain offshore funds from 38% to 35%, making investment more attractive and supporting long-term savings. It also reduces the capital gains tax rate from 33% to 31% for disposals made from budget day - the first such reduction in many years - to reward entrepreneurship and encourage home-grown businesses to grow and scale. Alongside these changes, the Bill strengthens supports for innovation and enterprise through enhancements to the research and development tax credit, extensions to start-up tax relief and the knowledge development box, and changes to corporation tax rules to reduce uncertainty and administrative burdens. Together, these measures will help to maintain Ireland’s competitiveness, encourage investment and support businesses to create jobs and opportunities across the country. The Bill also recognises the importance of our agricultural sector, with measures to support farm safety, succession and long-term productivity. These include an extension of accelerated capital allowances for farm safety equipment and enhancements to succession farm partnerships, supporting the next generation of farmers and the continued strength of Irish agriculture. I now turn to the contents of the Bill itself, which is substantial, running to 79 sections and 238 pages. Section 2 increases the entry point to the 3% universal social charge, USC, rate from €28,700 to €30,300, ensuring lower and middle-income earners benefit from wage growth and minimum wage increases without facing a higher tax burden. Section 3 increases the standard rate income tax bands by €2,500, raises the personal, employee and earned income tax credits by €125 and increases the home carer tax credit by €100. Section 4 increases the rent tax credit by €150 for 2027 and 2028, from €1,000 to €1,150 for individuals and from €2,000 to €2,300 for jointly assessed married couples or civil partners. Section 6 enhances tax relief for third level tuition fees by aligning the disregard amount with the student contribution fee rate, effective from the 2026-27 academic year. Section 7 increases the income tax exemption for qualifying childminders under childcare services relief by €5,000 to €20,000 and removes the limit on the number of children covered by the scheme. Section 10 extends existing tax provisions for termination payments to cover the full range of modern pension arrangements. Section 11 allows amendments to reporting obligations for benefits under the enhanced reporting requirements. Sections 13, 14 and 15 amend sports donations tax reliefs. Section 13 allows approved fundraising bodies to receive donations for sports capital projects, introduces limits on tax-relieved donations and strengthens reporting. Section 14 makes equivalent changes for donations to national governing bodies, including electronic tax repayment claims. Section 15 brings these donations within the high-income individuals' tax relief restriction, preventing them from reducing taxable income for the purposes of that restriction. Section 16 extends rent-a-room relief to rooms in auxiliary dwellings within the grounds of a principal residence until 31 December 2030. It also increases the annual tax-free limit from €14,000 to €16,000 from 1 January 2027 and protects entitlement to principal private residence and mortgage interest relief on the main residence. Section 17 increases the maximum help-to-buy relief for qualifying first-time buyers from €30,000 to €35,000. This applies where a purchase contract is entered into, or the first mortgage tranche for a self-build is drawn down, on or after 7 October 2026. Section 20 exempts certain payments under the work and access scheme from tax. Section 21 increases the income tax disregard for microgeneration from €400 to €600. Section 22 extends accelerated capital allowances for farm safety and disability-adaptation equipment until 31 December 2029 and adds 12 new qualifying items to the list of eligible equipment. Section 23 increases the annual succession farm partnerships tax credit from €5,000 to €10,000 for partnerships registered from 1 January 2027. It also removes the three-year asset-holding requirement before transfer for applications to register made from that date. Section 24 updates tax provisions by changing the benchmark used to define certain preference shares. Section 25 enhances the research and development tax credit by increasing limits on qualifying subcontracted expenditure to third level institutions and unconnected parties, allowing companies to claim 105% of qualifying research and development payroll costs subject to conditions, and increasing the first instalment from €87,500 to €105,000. Section 26 establishes the new savings and investment account framework. Irish residents aged 18 years or over may invest up to €12,000 annually through one account with an approved provider. A €50,000 tax-free threshold applies, with a 1% annual tax on the average asset value above that threshold. Income, gains and profits within the account are exempt from other taxes, with the provider administering the tax. Section 27 makes consequential amendments across the tax code to support the new regime and disapply certain related taxes and reporting obligations. Section 28 introduces a stand-alone tax regime for Irish-resident investors in investment undertakings held through recognised clearing systems. Section 29 reduces the tax rate on income and gains from life assurance policies, Irish investment funds and equivalent offshore funds from 38% to 35% from 1 January 2027. This applies to domestic and certain foreign life policies, Irish-domiciled funds and equivalent funds in qualifying EU, EEA and OECD jurisdictions. Section 30 extends start-up company relief until the end of 2030. Section 32 extends the knowledge development box, KDB, relief for a further five years, to accounting periods commencing on or before 1 January 2032. From 2027, existing claimants may irrevocably opt out for one accounting period, subject to conditions. It also clarifies the treatment of carried-forward KDB losses. Section 33 simplifies interest relief rules for borrowings used in certain lending and investment activities. Section 34 extends the deadline for certain interest limitation rule elections to two years after the relevant accounting period and makes technical amendments to improve their operation. Section 35 introduces a capital gains tax deferral where an unincorporated approved sporting body transfers its assets to an approved sporting body incorporated as a company limited by guarantee. This applies to bona fide incorporations involving the transfer of all activities. Section 58 provides a related stamp duty exemption, subject to conditions, while section 63 addresses the associated capital acquisitions tax treatment. Section 36 reduces capital gains tax by two percentage points to 31% for asset disposals from 7 October 2026. Section 37 extends the enhanced diesel rebate scheme rates for qualifying road transport operators until 31 December 2026. Section 38 confirms mineral oil tax changes, including deferred carbon tax increases and extended reduced fuel tax rates. Section 39 reduces natural gas carbon tax from 14 October 2026, while section 40 postpones solid fuel carbon tax increases until 1 May 2027, maintaining existing rates until then. Sections 41 and 42 implement budget 2027 changes to tobacco products tax and e-liquid products tax. Sections 43 to 47, inclusive, align the betting duty regime with the Gambling Regulation Act 2024. Sections 48 and 49 amend vehicle registration tax and extend electric vehicle supports for two years. Section 51 implements VAT modernisation measures in line with the EU’s VAT in the digital age directive. Section 52 increases the flat-rate farmer addition from 4.5% to 4.8%. Section 55 introduces a reduced VAT rate for certain livestock respiratory vaccines. Sections 59 and 60 amend the health insurance levy. Section 61 extends the bank levy for another year. Section 64 broadens the capital acquisitions tax exemption for maintenance, support and education payments to qualifying children following a parent’s death. Section 66 increases capital acquisitions tax thresholds by €20,000 for group A, €4,000 for group B and €2,000 for group C, applying to gifts and inheritances from 7 October 2026. Section 69 raises the annual threshold for tax relief on heritage item donations to Irish national collections from €8 million to €12 million. Section 71 enhances stock relief for registered farm partnerships, including young, trained farmers, and makes related changes to stamp duty relief for certain farmland leases. Section 72 updates Ireland’s pillar 2 legislation to reflect recent OECD administrative guidelines and agreements. Section 74 amends preliminary corporation tax rules. Section 75 provides another opportunity for landowners whose land appears on the revised residential zoned land tax maps published by 31 January 2027 to seek rezoning by the relevant local authority. It also provides for data sharing between Tailte Éireann and Revenue. Section 76 introduces a new Part 22C into the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997, establishing the legislative framework for the derelict property tax. While I have not covered every aspect of the Bill, further details are available in the explanatory memorandum published with it. I can confirm that it is currently intended to introduce the following amendments on Committee Stage: measures relating to the reform and modernisation of the professional services withholding tax arising from the joint public consultation earlier this year; amendments to the age-related valuation factors which apply to the standard fund threshold regime; the extension of the employment investment incentive, the start-up capital incentive, the start-up relief for entrepreneurs, and the relief for investment in innovative enterprises, also known as angel investor relief, to align with the general block exemption regulation; and, with regard to the research and development tax credit, the introduction of a new measure to provide that, where a clinical trial is regulated, this fact may be used to satisfy the science test to recognise research and development work undertaken by Irish companies as part of global trials and to reduce administrative burden. It may also prove necessary to introduce further amendments as the Bill progresses. The Bill implements the taxation measures announced in the budget and seeks to support households, enterprises, employment and economic growth. I look forward to working with colleagues in advancing this legislation and I commend the Bill to the House.

Dúirt an Rialtas gur cháinaisnéis d’oibrithe a bhí ann, ach is a mhalairt atá fíor. Anuraidh, ní bhfuair oibrithe rud ar bith as an cháinaisnéis agus, i mbliana, níor thug an Rialtas ach na grabhóga ón tábla do chuid mhór d'oibrithe na tíre seo. Ní bhfuair an chuid is mó d’oibrithe ach laghdú cánach ar fiú €4 in aghaidh na seachtaine é agus géarchéim chostas maireachtála ar siúl. Dúirt mé go bhféadfainn hachoimre a dhéanamh ar an cháinaisnéis i gcúig fhocal – "Imithe sula bhfaigheann tú é". Is é sin go díreach an rud atá le feiceáil. D;iarr Sinn Féin ar an Rialtas oibrithe agus teaghlaigh a chur chun cinn agus chun tosaigh sa cháinaisnéis seo. Ina áit sin, áfach, d’fhág an Rialtas daoine le billí agus costais níos airde agus a thuilleadh brú orthu. This Bill gives effect to the financial aspects of the budget. It was a budget that laid bare the Government's priorities. The Government called this "a budget for workers", but nothing could be further from the truth. Last year, we know that workers were completely abandoned. They got nothing from last year's budget and in this year's budget the Government gave most workers scraps. Most workers got a tax cut that is worth about €4 per week. Think about that: €4 per week in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. I have said that the budget could be summed up in five words: "Gone before you get it". That is exactly what has happened. Whether it is the little bit back in tax that has been eaten up by the cost of living, renters left handing over more and more of their pay cheques in rent, people on fuel allowance actually getting less this winter than they got last winter, the tiny reduction in the cost of home heating oil that was already wiped out by immediate increases in prices, or people who rely gas being given even less support, it was all eaten up by price increases the very same week. Sinn Féin called on the Government to put workers and families first in the budget and in the Finance Bill. Instead, the Government left people with higher bills, higher costs and more pressure. Just days before the Government introduced the budget, the Tánaiste stood up in this Chamber and told the Irish people, families and workers out there that "help is on the way". He said those words. Workers, families and pensioners waited and the help never came. This Finance Bill confirms what every worker right across the State already knows, which is that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil look out for those at the very, very top. Where is the proof of that? It is all over this Bill. Workers get €200 of a tax cut in the year but if you are an investor who made a profit of €1 million this year, you get a tax cut of €20,000 in this Bill. Vulture funds are dancing at this Bill. They go on not paying a single penny of tax on the rental income they charge when they rip off young and old renters across this city and elsewhere by charging astronomical rents. Not a single cent of tax are they being asked to pay on this rent despite the Department of Finance saying that loophole could be closed. The renters get a pittance again. There is no doubling of the rent tax credit as we called on the Government to do. Even though the Government knows that we have seen record numbers of people being unable to pay their electricity or gas bills, there is no sign of energy credits being introduced again by this Government. There is also no sign of the windfall tax Sinn Féin and others are demanding to make sure the very companies that are ripping off those same customers are actually taxed properly. The priorities of this Government are clear for everyone to see. Since the Government announced this budget, I have been contacted by loads of people. I want to recount the words of one person who wrote to me recently and told me her story, because the Finance Bill is not just about numbers or text on a piece of paper. It means something to people's lives. When the Government decides to prioritise the very top over ordinary, decent Irish workers and families, people suffer. Listen to the words of the 60-year-old who reached out to me recently. She works part time and she said: I am 60 ... I live alone. In recent years I had to cancel my home alarm. I had to cancel my ... TV and internet. Last winter I was cold [and] I had to ration my heating to the bare minimum. I ... go to bed early to be warm and I use electric blankets on my couch. Here we go again; another winter to dread. I could stand here until midnight tonight reading to the Minister of State letters that contain stories and testimonies of ordinary, decent people right across this State who feel so let down by the budget and who feel that, once again, the Government is not listening and not delivering the action and leadership that is needed. We in Sinn Féin told the Government time and again what we needed to see in this Finance Bill. We needed to see real action to get prices down. We needed to see real action on fuel costs. We needed to see energy credits in the form of €400. We needed to see the Government tackle the vested interests. We needed to see the Government stop allowing banks to make billions of euro in profit and only pay 1% in tax. At the same time that this Bill removes mortgage interest relief from people right across this State, people are now seeing interest rates increase and are finding it more difficult to pay their mortgage costs and the Government will not even extend mortgage interest relief. This Bill goes nowhere near far enough to helping people with crippling energy costs. Section 39 reduces the carbon tax on natural gas by a fraction. People were told that help was on the way. Instead, what has the Government delivered? It has delivered what amounts to as little as €30 off the annual bill. In the real world, in the very same week, what happened? These same companies jacked up their prices for customers, charging them multiples of what the Government offered people as help. Bord Gáis, SSE Electricity and others - I could go on and on - all pushed up their prices before families saw a cent in support. Let us remember the reality for people across the State. In this State, under Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael one in four people cannot pay their gas bill as we speak. There are 230,000 families across the State in arrears. We would fill Croke Park multiple times with the number of families who cannot pay their electricity bills, yet the Government thinks it is okay to hand out tax cuts to the wealthiest in Irish society while still denying people the support they need in terms of energy credits or taking on the companies which are ripping off those people. The reduction in the price of home heating oil, worth just €43 for a 1,000 litres fill, was immediately wiped out by rising prices. On budget day, the Tánaiste corrected the reporter in RTÉ when she claimed it was only about €40 of a benefit. He said, "No, no, no, it is €86". We know that is not true. It is in black and white in section 38 of the finance Bill. The benefit is €43. Did the Tánaiste genuinely believe his budget offered double the support he thought it did? Did he just not care? Did he take no interest in the real lived experience of any people? We know the €43 relief does not last long; only a matter of weeks. In December, the Government plans to increase the cost of home heating oil again by reintroducing the NORA levy, increasing the cost of petrol, diesel and green diesel and putting more pressure on workers and families across the State. The reduction of €43 in home heating oil will only last a couple of weeks and will be reduced to €23 by the end of December, a 1% cut for families who are struggling to keep their homes warm. The Tánaiste stood where the Minister of State is sitting now and told the Irish public on budget day, "I want to be very clear there will be no increase in any form of tax either at the pump or in your home during this winter period". We all know that is not true. Can we all admit in this House that that is not true, because he did not say that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil will jack up the prices of petrol, diesel and home heating oil come the end of December and make life just a little bit harder for all of those who are just trying to get by? That is the reality. The Government is doing that at a time when people are being charged nearly €2.20 cent for diesel. If we had a Government that understood where ordinary people were at, the finance Bill would have introduced a further reduction in excise duty on petrol and diesel. The Bill should have completely removed carbon tax from home heating oil. We continue to demand that the Government understands, listens and acts because people are under serious pressure. Section 48 increases VRT. That makes it more expensive for working people to own a car. For many families, a car is not a luxury. The people who sit around and make these decisions have drivers and do not have to pay to put fuel in their cars. They have State cars and are making decisions to make life more difficult by pushing up the price of petrol and increasing the cost of VRT. People in my community and elsewhere need their cars to get to work, drop their kids to school and make a hospital appointment. Petrol is not a luxury for them and the Government keeps finding ways to make driving more expensive. It needs to stop. The Government needs to stop targeting the motorist and rural Ireland and start doing the right thing. Of course we need to incentivise people in terms of climate action but making life harder for people who have no other option and do not have the money lying about is not the right way to go about it. I will go through a lot of detail in the Bill on Committee Stage. It is a 242-page Bill. It set out the parameters of the savings and investment scheme the Tánaiste has been focused on since budget day. I have no objection whatsoever to incentivising people to save for the future but I am concerned that this bears the hallmarks of a policy that was rushed. The fact the finance Bill includes an economic impact assessment shows that it is a case of having the ass before the cart. It is ridiculous. The Government is getting this the wrong way round. Experts and economists have repeatedly warned that a badly designed scheme could undermine the tax base. Any economic assessment has to include the cost to the Exchequer over the medium to long term. The Bill also contains changes to the research and development tax credit for corporations. We have seen substantial changes to this tax area in recent years. There will be changes to capital acquisitions tax. We need to analyse this on Committee Stage in terms of the cost and the fact only 0.3% of the population will benefit from the change to the tax rate in any given year. We also know that 60% of those who benefit from this are concentrated in Dublin. The cut to capital gains tax in section 36 was barely mentioned in the speech on budget day by the finance Minister, yet it removes €200 million from the tax base over the lifetime of the Government. That is €1 billion gone. There are tax cuts throughout the budget most people would not have heard about. There is a reduction in investment undertaking tax, the life insurance exit tax and the taxes equivalent on offshore funds. The Commission on Taxation and Welfare was very clear. It recommended moving away from an over-reliance on taxing workers and towards greater taxation on wealth and capital, yet the Government is moving in the opposite direction. The residential zoned land tax is once again being kicked down the road without any real solution. The derelict property tax will not be collected until the middle of 2028. For years, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, now backed by the Independents, have failed to tackle land hoarding and dereliction. As a housing crisis deepens, the Government continues to delay. The increase in the renter's tax credit stands out as very small, given that this is the year the Government pushed through the rent tax Bill which allows landlords to jack up rents on tenants across the board. The Government knows well that the €150 will end up in the pockets of landlords because it refused to ban rent increases. The Government should ban rent increases and double the renter's tax credit to €2,000, which would give renters real relief. The rent a room relief also seems to be designed to allow people to increase the rents they are charging as much as to incentivise people to enter the scheme. The Minister, Deputy Harris, got it right on help to buy when he said he did not want to increase the scheme because, in his own words, the worst one can do is help somebody trying to buy house is to accidentally push up house prices. He was right but he buckled under pressure from Fianna Fáil and has jacked up the amount involved. Therefore, house prices will increase further. It is shameful that mortgage interest relief was not extended. The Government knows the ECB has increased its rates and is likely to increase them further. People are under serious pressure and that amounts to putting more pressure and costs on households across the board. I will deal with this in detail on Committee Stage. Again, the Government failed the test of the finance Bill. It should have been about putting workers and families first. Instead, the Bill puts bankers, vulture funds, developers and those with significant wealth first, as only Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael do every time.

There were choices to be made in this budget and they are reflected in the finance Bill today. Above all, what is galling is that the Minister of State and Government will say this a budget for workers. Let me tell the House about a few workers I have met since the budget. I will confine my remarks to nurses, healthcare assistants and other workers in Mayo University Hospital. I understand health comes under the appropriation Bill but what the Government could have done in the finance Bill in terms of taxing vulture funds would have resulted in €335 million. I want the Government to know the problem that a sum of €335 million taken from vulture funds would mean to the workers the Government purports to stand up for. Today's Connaught Telegraph front page article by Caoimhín Rowland describes the situation for one cohort of workers in a headline stating, "Mayo graduate nurses left in limbo over jobs uncertainty". These are young nurses who have invested in their education and qualified, who got jobs in Mayo University Hospital and who were even told which ward they would be working on and the number of people they would be working with. Since the budget they have been told that has all been put on hold because of the allocation for the health service, which our spokesperson Deputy Cullinane told the Government was not enough for the existing levels of service in the health service. We are therefore left in a situation where there are 85 vacancies in Mayo University Hospital. That is not 85 new jobs, new measures or anything but existing jobs that are not covered because there is a halt on recruitment to fill those posts. Of those, 50 are for nurses and midwives. This budget is purportedly for workers but how can the Government say that when it put the workers who were in that hospital in that situation? I heard all kinds of talk last week about productivity and everything else and I asked several times what productivity the Government is looking for from nurses and healthcare assistants. They are already covering many jobs. One nurse may be covering the jobs of three or four other nurses and the same with healthcare assistants. They cannot be more productive and the Government is sucking the life out of these workers. Many of the workers have been there for decades. They have come through Covid and through the harshest times, including austerity. They came through it when the Minister of State’s party collapsed the economy in 2008 into 2009. Somehow they got through it and held everything together but they have never seen it so bad. I commend them on speaking out and ask them to continue to do so about what is happening in this situation because the consequence of not putting the money from the vulture funds into the hospitals and the care system is that people are left on trolleys and workers are left burned out. I will quote what a person who was in a hospital over the weekend with her mum said: Honestly Rose it's like a War zone , trolleys on every little nook and cranny of A& E. One man was with neighbour. This 93 year old man had dementia. It was so under staffed the neighbour was telling me that he would have put sudo cream on the man's bed sores if he could, there was no privacy. There was only one carer on the A& E for all these people. People helped me move my mum as the trolley was hard on her too. Another poor lady with some type of dementia on her own and clearly limited verbally. Rose these people aren't going to email or complain even though there 10+ hours in A& E were real and horrendous. These are the people who are bearing the burden of the choices the Government made in the budget and that it is making in the Bill.

Hear, hear.

The Tánaiste said help was on the way in this budget but who has been helped by the budget and this Bill? It is the asset holders who are getting a tax cut, it is the developers who are getting another top-up and it is the banks that pay virtually no corporation tax despite making billions of euro in profits. They all did well but there is very little in the Bill for struggling families, pensioners, disabled people or the hundreds of thousands of workers who are trying to stay afloat in the cost-of-living crisis. The legislation before us shows the Government’s priorities. I will start with income tax because that is where most workers will fail to feel the budget. The Minister of State’s officials in the Department of Finance examined the impact of this budget’s income tax measures. They described these measures as "regressive" and said the tax package "disproportionately benefits higher-income households". That is not me or the Social Democrats talking but what the Minister of State’s Department said in its budget documents. According to those documents, people earning between €30,000 and €40,000 will get significantly less than those who earn more. People earning between €30,000 and €40,000 are paying exorbitant rent, very high childcare fees and the most expensive electricity bills in Europe. How can the Government justify that? So much for helping those who need it most. Those were more hollow words and empty promises. The Government had choices and it has resources. Never has a government had so many resources at its disposal. Unfortunately, the Minister for Finance was more concerned with grabbing headlines than with the State’s financial health. Nowhere is that clear than in section 26, which outlines the new investment scheme. The Department of Finance says the economic impact assessment will only be published in the coming weeks. After the scheme was announced – not just in the budget because it was announced all year long on multiple occasions – it was put in this Bill, which beggars belief given the economic analysis has not even been done. There are billions of euro sitting on deposit in Irish bank accounts and any serious government would look at how that money could be used to do something useful. We have put forward proposals on that. Instead, it is being put into a risky scheme without even basic due diligence being done. This Bill follows the same failed housing policy we have seen for the past 15 years, which is to hand taxpayers’ money over to the private sector and hope for the best. Section 4 throws a bit more at the renter’s tax credit and section 17 expands the help to buy scheme. This is more money going to property developers and landlords, and for what? How many affordable homes have been built due to these measures to date? It is zero. How many more will be built due to their continued expansion? It is zero. When supply is short and more money is pumped in to feed demand, prices are pushed up. The Minister of State knows that. It is basic economics. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have been trying to subsidise their way out of the housing crisis for well over 15 years. The consequences have been catastrophic. It has led to record homelessness, record rents, record house prices, record numbers of people in their twenties and thirties still living in their childhood bedrooms and a generation locked out of housing. There are now nearly 20,000 derelict homes countrywide in addition to a huge number of vacant homes. They are a blight on communities and a slap in the face for every family searching for a home. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have stood over this for years. At last section 76 introduces a derelict property tax but local authorities will not even draw up the registers until 2027 and nobody will pay a cent under these new proposals until 2028. In the first year, it will only apply in towns of 4,000 people or more and it will never apply to derelict properties outside built-up areas of 2,000 people. Thus the derelict house at the end of a village street in rural Ireland is left out altogether, which is unjustifiable. Where is the urgency? Why is this Government so patient with those who let homes rot in the middle of a housing crisis? Fuel prices have hit people very hard this year. What was desperately needed was a targeted energy credit of €400 for households with an income of up to €70,000. What was also really needed was investment in the solar for all plan we in the Social Democrats put forward to permanently bring down cost-of-living and energy bills for households on a permanent basis, not just for those who can afford the cost of solar panels upfront but for people and families on lower and middle incomes who could really do with that measure to have a permanent reduction in their household bills. However, that was missing, as was the windfall tax we have put forward but which the Government has voted down that could be used to fund these much-needed measures. Bringing down people’s bills and tackling climate change share the same solutions. That is why we have put forward our solar for all proposals and why we need to have measures that will help us meet our climate targets, avoid massive fines and protect households from this energy shock and this cost-of-living crisis but also from the next energy shock. The Bill raises the tax-free limit on selling solar power back to the grid from €400 to €600. That is a welcome step, but it only helps people who can already afford the solar panels. That is the difference between our approach and the Government's. We want to fix things for people on all incomes and not just throw money around. I want to turn to who really does well out of the Bill. The taxpayer bailed out the banks at enormous cost, a cost future generations will still be paying off. Today, those same banks make billions of euro in profits every year. In fact, the sector has never done better, and it still pays virtually no corporation tax. What does section 61 do? It does not increase the bank levy. It does not triple the bank levy like we have advocated. It freezes it for another year despite their eyewatering profits. Tripling the bank levy would have been the best way to ensure that the banks pay their fair share. Is that too much to ask? It would have paid for our solar for all plan, bringing cheap, clean electricity to homes all over the country. Section 12 closes one of the loopholes in the domicile levy. That is welcome. However, the €200,000 charge is meant to make sure Irish tax exiles pay something towards this country. As the Minister of State well knows, compliance in recent years has been laughable. In 2010, 37 people paid the domicile levy. By 2024 that had fallen to just 13. The money raised has more than halved. The Government has known for years that this levy has been avoided. Proactive government would not stop at one loophole but would carry out a full review of the levy and ensure that all those who benefit from this country pay their fair share. Section 66 raises the inheritance threshold. Section 36 cuts capital gains tax from 33% to 31%. Together, they are going to cost the taxpayer €234 million in the first full year. That is €234 million for people who are inheriting wealth and selling assets. This money could have been used to help kick-start a public high-quality and affordable model of childcare that we desperately need. It would be an investment back into communities that would benefit generations of Irish families. Instead, it goes where it is needed least. While the Government found €234 million in tax cuts for asset holders, communities have been told there is no money. Some of the allocations in this year's budget are simply not enough to run the services that they cover. Overruns are not a risk; they are a certainty. We know this from the way the Minister has budgeted his allocations. They are an absolute certainty. Nothing has been done to ensure the gap between what Departments need and what they have been given is closed. This year, when the Department of Education and Youth's budget overran, the Government's answer was to impose a levy on every other Department. The Minister, Deputy Chambers, has called this "savings", "reform" and "efficiencies". That sounds good in theory. Who could be against it? However, in reality it has meant a cut to services on the ground that are badly needed in our communities. I want to give the Minister of State one example from my constituency. Darndale is a great community with an exceptional level of need. Two applications for funding were recently refused. One was to expand play therapy to schools in the area. When the applications for funding were refused, the Department made it clear that it was not because the applications did not have merit and were not valid and the projects did not need funding but it was due to the levy that was levied on the Department and budgetary constraints. This is a direct result of that levy. It is not an efficiency. The Minister cannot call it that. It is not a reform. It is taking money out of a community and projects that desperately needs them, and that would have been funded in the past up until this levy was imposed. Let us look at what is missing altogether from the Bill. There is no levy on data centres. Despite them pushing our electricity grid to the brink and driving up people's bills, they are not asked to pay 1 cent more. There is no windfall tax on energy companies, despite them making huge unanticipated profits, while over half a million households are in arrears. Why will the Government not ask them to pay their fair share? It is because households are being made to pay. Meanwhile, data centres and energy giants are making millions of euro. That is the choice the Minister and the Government are making. The public are asking where the help is that they were promised in the lead-up to this budget and Bill. We now have the answer. Help is there, just not for the people who really need it, including the income tax package that the Minister's own Department called regressive, the tax cut for people with valuable assets and bigger subsidies that push up house prices for developers. Energy companies, big banks and data centres can all continue to make billions of euro without paying their fair share. The Social Democrats would make different choices. We would target resources at those who need them most, invest in infrastructure, homes and public services that this country is crying out for and fix things instead of throwing money around. This, however, is a Finance Bill for those who need help the least. Our country deserves far better.

This Bill is deeply disappointing from a number of angles. My colleague has just gone through some of them. In particular, what is frustrating about the Bill is what it does not contain and what it should contain. When we look at the scale, in particular, of issues such as child poverty, households in arrears, and families who are literally struggling to cover the basics; elderly people turning off the heat and climbing into the bed in the middle of the afternoon to try to stay warm, what we are seeing at the moment is people really struggling. The Government utterly failed to put in place things that could help them, like we in the Social Democrats had proposed. The Government always goes on about us not having solutions. We put forward a very clear proposal for a targeted energy credit. The Government did not introduce it. Why not? Because it said it was operating within this framework when it could have put in place measures that could be in this Bill right now such as a windfall tax on energy companies, a levy on the banks or a levy on data centres that could fund a second tier of child benefit that it was told by the ESRI could lift tens of thousands of children out of child poverty. What this Bill and the budget show is what the Government is willing to do and what it is not willing to do. It shows the lack of priority for children who are growing up in poverty, many of them in my constituency from Ballymun to Finglas. They are in places across Dublin city and across the country. They are children whose lives have literally been damaged. Their development has been delayed and impacted not because of any other reason than a failure of this economy and society to ensure that they have the basics. It is a failure of the Government. It is incredible that one of the things the Government refused to do - one of the things it could have done - was to put in place a second tier of child benefit, which the evidence shows would radically reduce child poverty. There are measures that could have been brought in to address it in the Bill. I want to specifically address the derelict property tax. The Minister made a big thing of this and said that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were going to really tackle the issue of dereliction, but it is more smoke and mirrors. The tax is not coming in until 2028. Why is that? What is the reason for the delay? Why is it not being brought in immediately? Why is the derelict property tax being delayed? There is no logic to that. It is also a fact that fewer derelict buildings and sites are going to be eligible for this tax than the previous local authority derelict property fine it is replacing. That is absolutely scandalous. The Minister is reducing the proportion of buildings that will be subject to the derelict property tax. Rather than tackling dereliction, the Bill will reduce the level of fines. The Government is also setting out that local authorities will remain responsible for identifying the buildings and properties and putting them on the register. We know that one of the most fundamental problems with tackling dereliction has been the failure of local authorities to put buildings and sites on the register. What is going to change? How is the Bill going to change that? Are local authorities suddenly going to start adding loads of buildings and sites that they were not adding previously? We know some of the issues they face. I have come from the housing committee where the issue was being discussed by the local authorities themselves. They say one of the big reasons is they do not know who owns the buildings. They cannot find the owners. Dealing with this requires resourcing and time to chase up issues such as ownership. The local authorities do not have these resources, so there will be no significant increase in the number of derelict buildings that are liable for the tax. This is really problematic. It represents more spin than substance from the Government with regard to tackling the issue. The position gets even worse for local authorities because they will see their funding reduced as a result of the introduction of the derelict sites and buildings tax. In taking this function away from local authorities, the funding is not being ring-fenced to be returned to them. Local authorities will have less money to deal with dereliction after the tax is introduced because it will go to Revenue. We have asked the question and the money will go to Revenue, and it will not be ring-fenced and returned to local authorities. Will the Minister of State set out how local authorities will be properly funded? Will the Government ring-fence the money raised from the derelict sites tax so it goes straight back to local authorities and they can address this issue? Local authorities have raised the big issue that an owner of a derelict property can be served with a fine but then turn around and put a lick of paint on the outside of the building, after which it is no longer deemed derelict. This cannot be tolerated or accepted. We need local authorities to be able to compulsorily purchase these buildings and turn them into homes or put them to community use. It is unfair and disingenuous to say that the Government is tackling dereliction because this tax does not do so and will not do so. Another issue missing from this Finance Bill is a levy on data centres. It is incredible how the Government is rolling over backwards to facilitate data centres. It removed the moratorium on them despite the evidence showing how they guzzle energy and add to household energy costs. Research shows that growing data centre demand added €715 million to household electricity bills between 2015 and 2023, equivalent to €360 per household, while more than 300,000 electricity customers are in arrears. Data centres now consume 23% of Ireland's electricity but support just 3,300 direct permanent jobs. They are going to add hundreds of millions of euro more to people's electricity bills. Research by Dr. Seán Fearon, Dr. Patrick Bresnihan and Dr. Patrick Brodie at Maynooth University shows that the investment resources directed towards data centre construction between 2019 and 2024 were equivalent to the investment needed to build nearly 50,000 homes. Data centres have been built while we cannot and will not fund and build homes for our young people, who are leaving the country. The Government is putting data centres for billionaire big tech corporations ahead of young people in this country. It is becoming more and more clear that what is going on here is not beneficial for people. These data centres are producing AI slop and will add to household energy costs. It is completely unfair. We need a moratorium and a levy on data centres to ensure our resources go into proper infrastructure development. I want to speak about wealth tax. A wealth tax should have been introduced in the budget. We have massive wealth inequality. There is huge wealth in this country but it is deeply unequally distributed. The Government should have introduced a wealth tax to address this and to enable tackling child poverty and the cost of living. This would have made a difference.

I listened to Deputy Hearne speak about dereliction but I could not understand his position. Do the Social Democrats want Revenue to collect a derelict site tax? He did not spell this out. He spent so much time doing verbal gymnastics with himself that at one point I felt he was arguing against himself with regard to local authorities. He said local authorities were not doing enough to put sites on the register and then gave out to the Government for saying that Revenue should collect the tax that local authorities around the country had lost, in order to fund dealing with dereliction. What is the position? It is a very positive move that the Government has decided to give Revenue the power to collect the taxes on derelict properties. We saw that, once Revenue was given responsibility for collecting the local property tax, the initial challenges with the collection of charges effectively evaporated overnight. We know Revenue is good at one thing and that is collecting taxes. Having Revenue administer this charge of 7% will achieve the exact thing that Deputy Hearne cannot seem to get his mind around. The objective is not to collect tax. We do not want the derelict property tax to be a hugely successful revenue-raising measure for the State. We want it to be used as a stick because the Government has presented many carrots, including the vacant property refurbishment grant, the living city initiative and the other measures that are out there. I would be the first to say, and Deputy Hearne might agree with me, that we can probably do more and be even more ambitious, particularly in the city centre with the city centre task force. It has great ideas for developing over-the-shop living and cost-rental housing on Middle Abbey Street and Frederick Street North. There is also the question of economic viability. Does the living city initiative go far enough as an incentive, for example? Could we go further? Let us not row about the stick. Surely the Social Democrats, and I presume the Labour Party and Sinn Féin, agree that it is a good idea for Revenue to collect a tax that deals with the question of dereliction as a way of incentivising people who own properties in our cities, towns and villages to activate the properties in their ownership. I understand that, in the Chamber, Members have to criticise and oppose but when good ideas come along, it does not take much to acknowledge that they are good ideas. The measure addresses a challenge that perhaps should have been addressed much sooner, namely, that local authorities were not collecting the tax on sites on the derelict sites register to the level that they should have been. I agree with Deputy Hearne that they have not done enough to put sites on the register, but to simply throw up your hands and say that local authorities cannot be putting sites on the register is, frankly, ridiculous. Local councillors on every local authority throughout the country should be examining how many premises their local authority has put on the register. I know some local authorities have taken a narrow view that investing in personnel to go from door to door to assess whether a property should be on the register is not a good use of resources and that personnel resources should be invested elsewhere. However, this goes to the vitality of villages, towns and cities and to the whole question of social cohesion. In the situation we are in, whereby we are continuing to try to drive up the amount of housing supply we have in the country, nothing is more frustrating for families walking into a village when looking for a home than seeing a boarded-up premises that has remained so for a number of years without being activated. This is a form of vandalism. It may not involve graffiti or smashed windows, but the failure by the people and companies that own these properties in our cities, towns and villages to put them into active use is a form of social vandalism, which becomes even more pronounced when we have housing challenges such as those we have in this country. I commend the introduction of the vacant property tax in the Finance Bill. I also commend the other measures we have introduced, particularly in the previous budget, most of which were extended in this budget, to act as a carrot. When Revenue comes looking, the owners of these properties will know that we are not all about trying to tax them to the hilt; we are trying to encourage those who own a property. They will know that, in a number of months, there will be a deadline by which local authorities must have newly updated registers. Equally, local authorities know that, at national level, we are setting policy. The elected Government, which is the democratic Government of the country, has viewed as an absolute priority the tackling of vacancy and dereliction. We know that the carrots we have introduced, the grants, have borne fruit. For example, more than 7,000 previously vacant and derelict properties have been restored to residential use through the vacant property refurbishment grant, backed by more than €396 million in grant funding. Almost 20,000 applications have been received and more than 15,000 approvals have been granted since the scheme was launched in 2022. In the third quarter of this year, the scheme maintained its strong performance, supporting the refurbishment of 809 vacant and derelict homes between July and September. My local authority, Dublin City Council, had one of the largest numbers of homes restored under the scheme, bringing 554 homes back into use to date under the grant. The upper floors of buildings, above shop premises, can be an important part of the solution. I already cited the example of the Dublin city task force, which is examining properties on Middle Abbey Street and North Frederick Street. Converting upper floors into homes can increase the number of people living in our towns, villages and city centres and help to support businesses by bringing more residents into the heart of the community. The vacant above-the-shop grant, which offers up to €135,000 to property owners willing to breathe new life into empty upper floors, continues to gain traction. Some 78 applications have been submitted since the scheme was launched earlier this year. This reflects increasing interest in town-centre living and the reuse of vacant upper-floor space as a means of expanding housing supply. I know it is not within the domain of the Minister of State but we must keep the success of these carrot measures under review in bringing over-the-shop buildings into use. We should be as innovative and ambitious as possible, particularly in supporting the Dublin city task force, in getting people living in our city. Transforming older, complex commercial structures into compliant living spaces is rarely straightforward. Such conversions can be complicated. Owners may need to understand the condition of a building and its design, access, fire-safety, planning and other requirements before deciding whether a project is viable. The expert advice grant is a useful companion measure. To bridge that gap and to ensure projects are viable before major construction starts, the grant, worth up to €5,000, is specifically earmarked to help property owners cover the cost of professional guidance on the conversion process. It is very important that property owners know about these grants and that they are available, particularly as we approach the introduction of the collection by Revenue of taxes on properties placed on this register. The Government also introduced a targeted top-up of the vacant property refurbishment grant for entire former commercial or public buildings being completely converted fully into multiple homes. Figures show that there are 1,001 derelict properties across Dublin, making up approximately 0.2% of the overall housing stock. Collection of the derelict sites levy is currently the responsibility of local authorities but more than one third of Ireland's local authorities failed to collect a single cent of the levy in 2024, leaving an estimated €26 million uncollected. The introduction of a derelict property tax will bring more properties back into communities across the country. The finance Bill published by the Department of Finance has outlined the introduction of the new tax at 7% of a property's value. The tax is being introduced on a phased basis. In its first year of operation, the tax will apply in towns and cities recorded as having populations of 4,000 or more. In its second year, it will expand to towns with populations of 2,000 or more. By placing greater responsibility on property owners to address dereliction, the new tax sends a clear message that buildings should not be allowed to deteriorate indefinitely when they could be restored and returned to productive use. Our towns, villages and city centres must be places where people can live. Regenerating neglected buildings can help breathe new life into local streets, protect the character of our communities and create more welcoming environments for residents and visitors alike. This is about making the best use of places that already have a history, identity and community around them. Reusing existing buildings can help retain that character while adapting spaces to meet today's needs. This regeneration must be about more than the appearance of a building. It should help create active streets, support local services and make our communities places where people feel they belong. We also recognise that successful implementation will be essential. Local authorities must be adequately supported to identify derelict properties, maintain accurate registers and ensure the policy is applied fairly and consistently. Ultimately, the success of this measure should be measured by the number of derelict properties brought back into use, the homes made available and the lasting improvements delivered to communities. The need for housing remains our greatest challenge as a country and a society, and every effort should be made to utilise the housing stock available. The housing challenge demands that we use every practical option available to us. Building new homes is essential but so too is bringing suitable vacant and derelict properties back into use. We should not allow buildings to stand empty and deteriorate when they can provide homes, support local businesses or help revitalise our town centres. The new levy outlined in this finance Bill will encourage owners to take action and make use of the buildings we already have.

I walked around Shandon yesterday where I held my clinic. Shandon is one of the most historic areas in the State. It has the Shandon Bells and the old butter market. The history and culture there are unbelievable. If any other European city had an area like Shandon, with its restaurants and shops, the whole area would be a magnet for tourism. Instead, when I come out of my office, I look up the hill at the old Connie Donovan's pub, which has been a shell of a building for 25 years. Next to it is the old Róisín Dubh pub, which has been boarded up for another 20 years. Approximately 20 yd from my office is a building that used to be a family home. It is falling down and has a tree growing out of it. There is also an empty shop that used to have a family living above it. The amount of dereliction and vacancy allowed to occur in an area that should be a diamond in Cork's tourism industry is extraordinary. The area is important not only for the city but also for the county and the State because it is so historic. Instead of promoting the area and tackling dereliction and taking on vacancy, this Government has stated in the finance Bill that it will not start collecting the derelict sites levy until June 2028. I must be honest: the Government must have no shame at all. The Minister, Deputy James Browne, said earlier in the year that he would have a war on dereliction but he is not going to collect the derelict sites levy until June 2028. I have just come from a housing committee meeting. Most local authorities have one derelict sites officer. Most do not have an up-to-date and complete derelict sites register, and no local authority has collected all amounts due for the outstanding derelict sites levies. At the start of the year, the outstanding figure was €32 million. It will probably be closer to €40 million by the end of the year. It is not being collected. Instead of having a war on dereliction, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are having an amnesty for the vulture funds and speculators that allow these buildings to rot and destroy communities. I think it was the Minister of State, Deputy John Cummins, who said at the time of the budget that the Government had probably implemented too much carrot and not enough stick. What an understatement. The Government has been all carrot and no stick. It is time these people who are destroying our villages, towns and cities were taken to task. Why will the Government not take them to task? When it comes to the derelict sites levy and the vacant homes tax, there is self-assessment. Only a couple of thousand people have self-assessed. The vast majority, tens of thousands of people, have not. Does the Government think that is acceptable? The derelict sites levy and the vacant homes tax are a joke. The thing about it is that it would be funny if it were not so serious. We have tens of thousands of houses, both derelict and vacant, blighting every community in the State, and the Government is doing nothing about it. Why is this? It is because the Government would sooner look after its buddies, the investors and speculators. The Minister of State is nodding his head at me. If he is nodding his head at me, why is the Government not collecting the levy now? Why is the derelict sites levy not being collected? Why is the vacant homes tax self-assessed? I ask the Government to give the Revenue the permission and the decision-making power to take on these people. They are destroying our communities. Does the Minister of State know who is protecting them? It is Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. They are protecting the people who are destroying our towns, villages and cities. The Minister of State is there nodding but he will not do anything about it.

I am pleased to speak on the Finance (No. 2) Bill on behalf of the Labour Party. On the face of it, Ireland is a country that is doing well. From the outside looking in, though, the headline numbers paint an incomplete picture. As someone who is proud of his country, it would be churlish of me not to recognise some important facts and some progress that has been made. In a few short years, we have gone from jobless rates heading for 20%, going in the wrong direction, to sustained technical full employment, and from the loss of economic sovereignty and public finances torched by populist politics and reckless economic management to the point where we have established savings funds to act as a buffer against future shocks. However, this tells only part of the Potemkin Ireland variation of the story that this Government likes to tell. As someone who has pride in his country and who tries to practise responsible politics, I have an obligation to point out that all is not well. All the outward signs of success mask the real Ireland, where manifest economic success, record Exchequer revenue and all of these achievements still coexist with shameful levels of child poverty and homelessness, and infrastructure levels and standards way below what this rich country should be entitled to expect. We have had 13 years of continuous growth, unparallelled in this State's short history, growth that we hope will be sustained in the future, but with frustratingly little to show for it. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have, as I have said time and again, wasted a boom. It used to be the case that having no money was our persistent problem. That was the traditional problem. That was what held this country back over generations. Now, what is holding us back is a lack of vision, ideas and ambition. In fact, money has made this Government lazy. It is always said that you can discern a government's philosophy and agenda from its budget. On the evidence of the budget two weeks ago and this Finance Bill, the only agenda seems to be to double down on the Government's base with cuts to areas like capital gains tax and capital acquisitions tax and the introduction of new savings and investment schemes, which have been soft-launched about 1,029 times by the Tánaiste, in the hope that they just do enough to get back into government after the next election. It is important that, when we are debating the Finance Bill, we take a closer look at the backdrop and the overall health of the public finances. It does look like the economy will continue to grow strongly. Modified domestic demand is likely to be at 3% next year. That is impressive, especially when set against a very uncertain global environment. We can say with a good degree of hope that full employment will be maintained and that wages will grow. Not every European country can say that. That said, the risk is that inflation may come in at close to 4% and could outpace wage growth, and the limited PAYE tax changes proposed in this Bill risk leaving many working people even less well off next year, when taken alongside the massive anticipated hikes in energy bills, the cost of the weekly shop and so many other factors outside of the control of households. Indeed, many of those factors, as the Minister of State will know and as he has said, are outside the control of the current Government, or any other government, for that matter. Talking of risks, and there are risks on the downside, we are duty-bound to keep reminding the Government of the vulnerabilities of the public finances arising year after year from our now notorious reliance on transitory corporation tax receipts. The headline surplus of over €9 billion masks an underlying deficit of over €13 billion when the windfall element is stripped out. Not only are we relying on tax revenues from less than a handful of mega foreign direct investment, FDI, firms for half of our business tax haul, but we are also depending on a small number of products and patents from less than a small handful of companies. In short, Ireland is the only place in the world that is getting fat on Mounjaro. I shudder to think what the withdrawal symptoms would be like for public spending and the country's finances if something were to go wrong. We know that half of all corporation tax paid in 2025 was from only three firms. This is the stamp duty of the 2020s. The way in which these moneys landed in the national accounts is, by some measure, less connected to the real economy than even the construction madness of the 2000s was. The risks are clear. The estimate of transitory receipts is €22.9 billion for 2027. We should think about that. We are funding permanent spending here. We will also end up borrowing by the end of the decade to put money into the savings funds. The Labour Party supports the savings funds and it is the only Opposition party to have done so, but of course we have no real clue where bond yields will be at the end of the decade. This is a risky strategy when borrowing to save. Time and again, the warnings continue to be ignored and, at some point, if we keep going in this direction, the price, like the last time, will be paid not by the supporters of this Government who will benefit from capital gains tax, CGT, and inheritance tax cuts but by the people who do not, namely the people with few assets beyond their own home, if they have a home at all, and who rely on public services and not the private market for health and education services. Those who will benefit will be insulated; they always are. They were the last time and they will be again. The pace of spending growth is higher here than in peer countries but with the underlying balance in deficit. We are paying for increased spending with cash that might not be around in a few years. Rest assured that what I propose is not a prescription to arrest the necessary investment in services we need and that have suffered over many years from underinvestment. Rather, it is a call to diversify and deepen our sources of tax revenue to fund the State we need and to service this economy and rapidly changing society. Classically, any economist will tell you that the time to do this is when the economy is doing well and, when tax revenues are buoyant. That is when you broaden the tax base and make the changes we ought to be making. I wish to say to the Tánaiste in his absence that I was dismayed when he said the following to the Business Post in his post-budget interview with it two weeks ago: "I don't have any immediate plans to broaden the tax base." A comment like that from a Minister for Finance is the height of irresponsibility and recklessness, knowing full well, as he does, the vulnerabilities involved in the public finances in Ireland. It is a sign of the absolute intellectual poverty at the heart of the Irish political system. The fact is that we have a Government that has never met a tax it did not want to introduce, and some in opposition have never met a tax they did not want to cut. I accuse the Government of dishonest budgeting, and I stand over that. We saw it, as others said earlier, with the deliberate underfunding of the education budget last year and the imposition of levies in various Departments this year to pay for that. We see it in the consistent lowballing from Ministers, who will come in here routinely, on a rinse-and-repeat basis, towards the back end of every year and seek Supplementary Estimates to cover their tracks and make up for their mistakes. Those Supplementary Estimates added up to an average of €2 billion per year over the last few years. That cannot continue. We need to stop the dishonest budgeting and underfunding and be honest and realistic about what it costs to run quality public services in this country. I said in my budget response that it is about time we had an honest debate in this Chamber, or in the people's Parliament, about tax and spending and what these involve. The budget did not represent that honest conversation, debate, discussion or dialogue, and this Bill does not represent it either. When we talk about dishonest budgeting, we should just take a look at the tax package contained in the budget and in this Finance Bill. The full-year cost is not €1.6 billion but €2.2 billion if we include, for example, the excise cuts, the carbon cuts and so on that are funded from the surplus. This is the kind of accounting that would make Manchester City blush. What is more, the Government has only managed to raise over €200 million in additional tax revenue. The idea of extracting €200 million from the bank levy and a few bob on cigarettes and vapes is hardly novel or revolutionary. Again, it suggests a poverty of thinking at the heart of the Government and a poverty of ambition for this country. As the saying goes, "I hope it stays well for you", because there are risks. Those risks are simply not being taken into account. It is beyond time that the Government took the report of the Commission on Taxation and Welfare seriously. The perpetual ghosting of the commission and its recommendations is tantamount to this Government's "[we] have had enough of experts" moment. The commission showed that there is a menu of revenue-raising options which would have no impact on the productive enterprise economy, to the tune of about €13 billion. That menu of options could be implemented to broaden, deepen and widen the tax space to address the vulnerabilities we all know about. The Minister and his colleagues need to take a closer look at those recommendations. It would also be useful, as the Committee on Budgetary Oversight recommended in its pre-budget report, for the Government to finally produce, some four years on, an assessment on the report of the Commission on Taxation and Welfare and identify the areas in that report it is considering implementing and introducing. To date, all the Government has done is ignore it. Just as it ignored the warnings of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, it ignores the expert Commission on Taxation and Welfare. This is neither sustainable nor responsible. I note the report of both the Department of Finance and the ESRI on a wealth tax. It is a report on which I hope we can have a comprehensive debate in this House. Believe it or not, some four years after the publication of the report of the Commission on Taxation and Welfare, we still have not had a full debate on it in this House. The Government is running away from it. I have been calling for such a debate, and I get the impression that some on this side of the House do not want to have it either. On the subject of broadening the tax base and wealth taxes, the reduction in inheritance tax and CGT in this Bill makes no sense to me. Inheritance tax is the definition of a minority sport. I note the recent comments from Professor Barra Roantree, outlining that just one in ten of us will ever receive an inheritance that will attract the attention of the taxman. The issue of inheritance tax attracts an outsized proportion of media and political attention, mostly from people in this House on the political right. I understand how some people feel about this. I understand it is an issue that is personal to many people. I get that. I am not callous. However, it is not the biggest issue of social equity facing us in this House. It is not the biggest issue of social equity, fairness or economic justice facing anyone in this country, quite frankly. It has to be said that to inherit a sum of money or assets is a privilege in itself, and it should be taxed as such. I am not sure what evidence-based case can be made for the changes proposed in this Bill beyond the thresholds keeping pace with asset inflation. In the end, this is the transfer of close to €50 million next year from one group of taxpayers to another. This has not received sufficient interrogation. On the CGT changes, I also advise the Minister to proceed with caution. This seems to me to be nothing more than an ideological change. There is no sign in the market of any issues with the selling of assets and so forth. We know that the market is robust, so what behaviour is this proposal trying to change or promote? If there is ever a case for any form of cuts to CGT, there is an arguable one to be made when business activity is low and the Government needs to boost it. This, however, seems to be a sop. There is no evidential basis for it. Looking at this change and the inheritance tax changes, it is fair to say that there is a certain profile of voter who will benefit from this above all else. In fact, there is a certain profile of voter who will benefit from both changes. It is not the people who get up early in the morning – to use the hackneyed Fine Gael phrase of lore – but, rather, the people who can afford a bloody good lie-in. These are the people who, proportionally, may have done the best from this month’s budget. They have, once again, found themselves in the winners' enclosure. Turning to the income tax changes proposed in this Bill, we were told by the Tánaiste in the run-up to the budget that we would have a workers' budget, but it was nothing of a sort. I agree with Owen Reidy, general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, that the budget tax package contained in this Finance Bill was a half-hearted apology for last year's deliberate gaslighting of PAYE workers. The seeds of much of the discontent felt now go back to last year’s notorious decision imposed on this House and the Government by the now Tánaiste and Minister for Finance, Deputy Harris, to lash out over €700 million to the hospitality sector at the expense of tax adjustments for working people. This was an ill-conceived decision and it will come back to haunt the Government parties. What also fed into this was last April’s protests that closed the country down. We know the Government made the decision to, essentially, sign the cheque for those who brought the country to a standstill while, at the same time, telling public sector workers, whose collective bargaining agreement - the national pay agreement - expired in June, that they and their trade unions, the people who play by the rules, should go to the back of the queue. We know there was an eleventh-hour opportunity represented by the budget to try to shift the dial and make a last-minute effort to try to avoid last Wednesday’s eminently avoidable dispute. Working people, however, took one look at the budget and rightly decided that it was not for them. For nurses on €50,000, they will have about €750 more in their purse next year. A clerical officer in Louth County Council who is just starting out will have next to nothing at the rate of pay he or she enjoys. The Tánaiste, with a straight face, tried to tell people that this was a workers' budget against the backdrop of the performative crap from Fine Gael about whether they were going to accept the Low Pay Commission’s recommendation on increases to the national minimum wage next year. We have a Government that has decided to bury the ambition that this country should have for all working people to have a living wage. That is absolutely astonishing. What we should be doing - we will propose this by way of amendments on Committee Stage - is automatically indexing PAYE tax bands and credits to take into account wage inflation, as they do in many other rich countries across the European Union, as well as indexing social welfare rates in order to take those issues off the table every year. Then, at future budgets when we would be debating the finance Bill or the social welfare Bill, it would allow us to discuss real politics and real bread-and-butter issues about how we tax and spend. That is a debate that we cannot seem to have in this country, however. It is extraordinary that the Government has decided not to impose a windfall tax on the supernormal profits of energy companies. We know the template is available. It was used a short number of years ago. The story of this budget will be the absence of the kinds of energy credits that we in the Labour Party have been proposing for the 1.2 million households with incomes of less than €80,000. If we had the ambition to do it, they could qualify for an energy credit that would help them through what is going to be a difficult winter. That is markedly absent from this budget. It would come at no expense to the Exchequer. Supernormal profits are being posted by the energy companies not through their own genius but, rather, as a result of international circumstances. A case can be made for such a tax. We do not need to wait for the European Commission or anyone else to tell us that we can do it; it is within the power of the Tánaiste. I ask him to reflect on that ahead of Committee Stage of the Finance Bill. In the short period of time remaining, I will draw attention to some of the issues that will undoubtedly arise from the derelict sites tax. I have campaigned for this for years. It is important that the Revenue Commissioners collect the derelict sites tax. We know that local authorities are finding that derelict sites levies are being routinely ignored by those who are captured by it. There are issues in this regard, however. There is a resourcing issue for local authorities. They will require additional staff to be able to manage this. There are also two different definitions of dereliction, one in this Bill and another in the Derelict Sites Act 1990. That must be addressed. We need to find a way to ring-fence the resources that local authorities will be managing as a result of this levy. They get the levy now, while Revenue will be sending the revenue back through the derelict sites tax to central Exchequer funds. A way ought to be found to ensure that the resources collected will go right back to the local authorities. One way of doing that would be, for example, to increase the block grant by the equivalent amount of the derelict sites tax and send that right back to the local authorities. That is an area I hope we can address on Committee Stage. Finally, I will briefly touch on the Tánaiste's savings account scheme. One thing that has not been looked at yet and ought to be looked at on Committee Stage - I would like to hear from the Tánaiste on this - is the issue of annual management charges. If it is the case that some of the same providers who are providing pensions and so on across the country will be charging the same forms of annual management charges, that will cause real difficulty in terms of take-up of the scheme.

I want to speak specifically about home support services, which some people call home help or home care. In budget 2027, €1.043 billion was allocated to this, which is a very large sum of money. It is up on 2026 and 2025. Indeed, it goes up every single year. This provides for 28.5 million hours of home support, which sounds fantastic. There is plenty of money allocated to it but the reality is that year on year, there are issues. Different Deputies will eventually put down parliamentary questions in 12 months time because a lot of this budget will not get used up. If a family has a loved one coming home from hospital in acute need of support in the home environment, it is nigh on impossible to get someone in the locality who can fulfil those hours. I know of many examples but one that came in last Friday was someone who has been approved for ten hours of home support but can only get 1.5 hours. That person is now questioning whether it was right to come home from hospital in the first place. This happens time and time again. It could be any county but it is particularly felt in rural counties. We just cannot get the workforce. Too often we are accused in government of not pledging enough money to schemes but the opposite is the case here. The money has been pledged but we cannot get the workers. This has consequences for people's quality of life. It can lead to unnecessary stays in nursing homes and to bed blocking because a lot of people feel that they cannot leave the hospital environment because things are not set up at home for them to be supported. An estimated 42,123 acute bed days were lost in the first quarter of this year due to bed blocking, which costs acute hospitals over €20 million each year. I have written a policy paper on this and have pitched it this evening to colleagues. In the Finance Bill we should be looking at a community care income exemption. Such an exemption exists for people who provide child care. At the moment people can provide child care in their own home and receive an income across a 12-month period of up to €20,000 without having to pay additional income tax. It is incentivising people who ordinarily need to be available in the morning to do the school drop-off and to be back at the school gates in the afternoon to pick up kids. There are four hours during the day when they could fulfil a working role in their community, but at the moment they are disincentivised from doing so. I am pitching the idea that we bring in an income tax exemption that would cater for them. There are five areas within the remit of the Finance Bill that this could cater for. Again, the template is there already when it comes to child care and I am asking that the same consideration be given to home support. In the context of the Finance Bill, we could first allow qualifying people to earn a tax-free income of €20,000 from approved care work. Second, we could exempt that income from the USC. Third, we could disregard qualifying earnings when calculating the home carer tax credit. Fourth, we could limit the qualifying work to prescribed care organisations. Fifth, we could introduce annual earnings and working hour limits. What this proposal involves is activating a greater workforce - people who are in the community who can fulfil a role in the community. I am referring here to a certain amount of hours. We are not trying to displace people from full-time employment. We are trying to activate more people. We are trying to ensure that people who need home support and home care in their home can get it. I do not want to be here in 12 months time looking at over €1 billion of funding not used up because we could not get enough home carers and home support workers to fulfil those hours. It is an idea that I have pitched to the Taoiseach and to colleagues in the Fianna Fáil Party in the last ten or 15 minutes. I hope the Minister and colleagues, as they prepare and work their way through the Finance Bill, can factor for this because we need to be innovative here. We need to activate a workforce that is currently disincentivised from working at all.

I welcome many of the measures within this Bill, particularly the research and development tax credits. I note that there are provisions here to tighten some of the rules around high net worth individuals making donations, for instance, for sporting purposes. There is an anomaly that exists, almost at the other end of the scale, if somebody chooses to donate a piece of land to a sporting or cultural organisation. If someone donates a piece of land to the State, a local authority, a university or certain charities or cultural organisations, they will be exempt from CGT, but if they donate it to a sporting body or certain other cultural organisations, it will be assessed at the notional market value of the land and subject to CGT. Let us say I have a field that I want to donate for a peppercorn rent to my local soccer club or GAA club. I know of instances of this. If I donate that land, which is valued at €100,000, I will then be subject to the current rate of CGT of 33%, which is a bill of €33,000 or the new rate of 31%, which is a bill of €31,000. This does not incentivise the donation of land for sporting purposes or for certain cultural organisations. If I wanted to donate land to a university for its sports club, for instance, I would not be subject to CGT but if I wanted to donate it to a sports club down the road, I could be subject to CGT. In the context of some of the changes that are happening here around high net worth individuals - I understand why that is being done - I am asking that consideration be given to being able to support community facilities. If an individual within any of our communities wants to make a donation of land, he or she should not be subjected to a financial penalty for doing that. I appreciate that there are rules and restrictions that may be put in place but it is something I have raised previously with the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance. I ask that the Minister of State, in his response, would provide clarity as to why the matter is not being considered or if, on Committee Stage, it could be examined in detail. I want to make a final comment in response to Deputy Nash. I do not think there should be any apology from this side of the House for saying that when people work hard, they should be in a position to get some of their taxes returned. If people work hard, they are entitled to be able to choose how to spend their own money. I was disappointed with the budget last year. We did not sufficiently protect workers in terms of the tax reliefs that were given. I was happy that we were able to do some more this year. In the context of future budgets we need to protect low- and middle-income workers further, which means addressing issues around the USC. However, I make no apologies for saying that we need to invest in services but at the same time, we have to ensure that it pays to work and that we reward people who choose to go to work.

To follow on from a point made by Deputy Byrne, the people who have probably worked the hardest and have been ignored by the budget are the people from other generations. They are elderly now. Many are living alone but some are still together as couples. They have been abandoned by a lot of the budgets. They worked hard and they knew what hard work was. They now want from the State some form of recognition in terms of their pensions and other entitlements because they still have a desire to live well and have a decent quality of life. I do not know how many of the elderly and those who are retired actually exist on some of the payments they are in receipt of. The payments have not kept pace with the serious cost-of-living issues that are now faced by those in that category. One might also say that the people who work for themselves, in family-run businesses, have not been looked after well by the State for a long time. It was always the case that this sector, employing almost 1 million people at one stage, would be understood and be given the opportunity to remain in business. Down through the years they would have made an argument around commercial rates having no regard for the profitability of the business and around businesses having to pay the commercial rates continually. The commercial rates system is completely and utterly out of date. No Government has an appetite to deal with it, even though it is cited as the single thing that people in business are absolutely annoyed about. Likewise with insurance costs - be they for transport, households or public liability - the Oireachtas finance committee detailed very strongly in a report the reforms that are needed. However, they did not happen, and all of that work went to one side. It is the same way with energy bills. We can take any business that has closed down in any of the shopping streets throughout our communities and they will tell us the same story, which is a story of neglect of their input into a local community. It is neglect in the Government's understanding of where they are in supporting communities and in creating local employment. That is why more and more of those businesses are closing. We are saying let us have a derelict property tax. That is fine, but we are creating the dereliction ourselves because we are not understanding what is required in a local community and on a local high street. Our answer as a Government is that there are too many of them in it, so we will tax the site itself. That is causing further problems for the business that closed in the first place. It does not make any sense whatsoever. It is similar to the case I made last week for foster carers. They do a massive job for the country at great cost to their own families, yet none of the reforms they identified have been acted upon. There is just lip service. There is no actual acknowledgement. We have the elderly being abandoned, small businesses being abandoned and all of us are talking about the big profits from the big digital companies. Will they be there forever, or will we just take those profits and not support a society that we should have a vision for? If we want the country to be in a certain place and in a certain way then we have to make plans for that and we have to structure our tax regime to reflect what we are trying to achieve. The whole system seems to be top heavy with bureaucracy and red tape and no real appetite to deal with it. The Government has put billions of euro into the different Departments. It should make sure it gets value for money and not be afraid of reform.

Our universities are teetering on a cliff edge, and this Government cannot continue to ignore the warning signs. For years, the Government and its predecessors have presided over chronic underfunding of higher education and as a result of this, institutions are expected to do more for less. Students are paying the price, and our higher education system is being pushed towards breaking point. State funding for students is now 34% lower than it was in 2008. Let us think about that. Student numbers have soared. Operating costs have surged, expectations on our universities have grown and yet funding has failed to keep pace. The Government's response is a paltry €10 million in additional core funding against a crisis estimated by the Irish Universities Association to exceed €250 million. That is a drop in the ocean and a failure to acknowledge the magnitude of the problem, never mind address it. In 2022, a commitment was made to provide €25 million annually towards closing that funding gap. What has happened to that commitment? There seems to be no ambition and none of the investment our students were promised. Resourcefulness, which our universities are having to put up with, cannot substitute for a properly funded system. The student accommodation crisis is one of the biggest barriers facing students, and students are being priced out, forced into long commutes or left wondering if they can afford to attend university at all. Rhe new student accommodation strategy proposes handing public land to private investors while student unions raise serious concerns about this and universities question whether these plans are even feasible without Government funding. Private investors are all about making money. That is what they do, so why should public land be handed over to build student accommodation that may not even be affordable to those who need it? How many more students must struggle before higher education is treated as a public good rather than a budgetary afterthought? It is time to end the broken promises, stop kicking the can down the road and properly fund our universities and our students. Where is the promise of abolishing student fees? Students are now paying more in fees than they were when the promise to abolish fees was first made. Is it any wonder that slogan, "We have the dearest free education in the world", resonates with so many? Newly qualified nurses and midwives cannot get contracts. In the mid-west we have a hospital that has few elective surgeries taking place. They do not have the capacity. They do not have the staffing, and this hospital serves more than 400,000 people. Suspending necessary surgeries is not only outrageous but is dangerous. We are spending millions of euro on agency staff yet newly qualified nurses and midwives cannot get contracts. The HSE in the mid-west has not received any additional staff since June. The issue of overcrowding and capacity remains a significant concern for staff and patients. With winter approaching, there is also real concern for patient and staff safety. We are seeing trolley numbers rising and this is an issue that both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael failed to take any meaningful action on. The people in the mid-west who have lost family members will attest to that. When will we see a lifting of the recruitment cap with proper investment in staff? When will we see the recommendations from the HIQA report, presented more than a year ago, implemented? There seems to be no urgency in this. We do not even have a sexual assault treatment unit in the mid-west because we cannot get staff for it. That is deplorable. The people of north and west Clare are being put at risk because their nearest emergency department is too far from where they live. When will the people of Clare and the mid-west have the health services they depend on and deserve? We need action in the mid-west. We do not need to see another year where patient and staff lives are put at risk.

I address the question of vacancy and dereliction and the derelict properties tax. This tax has now been pushed out for almost another two years until June 2028. That is much too long and should be shortened during the passage of the legislation. There may of course be a case for a single property owner in difficult circumstances but there is no case to be made for large property owners, some with multiple derelict properties across the country. Such a property is Market Place, Clonmel, which has been largely vacant and derelict for more than ten years. It has been described as a ghost town. Vacancy and dereliction accelerated after the closure of SuperValu in 2016, but it was the subject of a distressed auction as far back as 2012. Big developers and property owners must not be allowed to sit on this property and properties like it a minute longer and it should be subject to the 7% tax immediately on the passing of this legislation. The main streets of all our towns across the country have high vacancy rates. Clonmel is no exception with a vacancy rate of 18.8%, which is above the national average of 14.5% but lower than many other towns of its size across the country. The living city initiative, a tax incentive scheme aimed at refurbishing vacant properties, was originally introduced for Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Limerick and Galway. The updated scheme introduced in budget 2026 extended that to some larger towns but Clonmel was excluded. I ask the Minister to amend the scheme during the passage of the legislation to include Clonmel. Another scheme aimed at tackling vacancy is the over the shop scheme and that should also be revised. Currently, only individuals can apply for support under this scheme. However, many town centre shops are owned by long established small family companies, effectively micro companies. These small companies are not eligible for support. This change would give the scheme a significant impact on town centres across the country.

The Bill has dozens of measures to amend the Taxes Consolidation Act, the cumulation of finance Bills for years and years. When we look at it in the round of what this budget has done and how it adds to the existing situation in this country, it primarily consolidates. It is also well-named. What the Taxes Consolidation Act does is consolidate the gross inequality in the distribution of wealth and income in this country. Every year it either consolidates it as it is or worsens the inequality in the distribution of wealth and income. What is in it is one thing. I will talk a little about that, and what is not in it or what it fails to change to address the accumulation of wealth and income inequality that previous Finance Bills have built into the system. Taking this year - maybe following on from Deputy McGettigan as I am on the same committee for further education as her - I will contrast three of the big tax giveaways in the budget: the research and development tax credit extension, which is worth €118 million, the capital gains tax changes worth €186 million and the investment in corporate trades tax change which is worth €58 million. Those three measures are worth €354 million in total. That will only benefit a tiny group, not ordinary workers but capitalists. These are people who make money by investing the already vast amount they have and then the money makes money. That is, of course, what our tax system does. It reinforces that, allowing people who already have vast amounts of wealth and money to make more money off the vast amount of wealth and money that they have. This will add to that. That figure, if you contrast it, would also fill the gap mentioned by Deputy McGettigan. The funding gap for further and higher education, according to the Association of Irish Universities, is €360 million. We have seen the amount of investment per student in third level and higher education drop by more than 30%. This is the amount of investment going into the individual students in our further and higher education system who are our future. They are the people who will make better in this country. We have decided to give the money that could close that funding gap to the owners of the tech companies, the investors in corporate trades, and people who have large amounts of commercial property and commercial assets. That is the choice the Government has made - €360 million to the capitalists or €360 million to close the gap in further and higher education. I know what I think is the priority and what I think we would find was that of the vast majority of people in this country. If asked which choice they would prefer, we can safely say that most of our students and most of those working in further and higher education and, I suspect, probably most people would say, "Let us go for funding third level and further education properly", instead of letting the investment per student collapse to the point it has, which has massively detrimental effects. Forget about us radical socialists or revolutionary socialists who want to turn the system upside down, which, by the way, we do. Even the mainstream economists are worried about our over dependence on foreign direct investment, and that we are vulnerable because of it, because too much of our tax revenue is now reliant on a tiny group of companies who we have decided to give more money too in the previous budget. While I mention the research and development tax credit that would close the funding gap in further and higher education, that €118 million extra they are getting is on top of the €976 million they already get annually. It is now over €1 billion a year in just one tax relief, overwhelmingly going to companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Google and Meta, which I will mention incidentally are also the people who are using what soon will be 30% of our electricity and driving up all our electricity bills. To mention a few of their headline Irish profits, Apple's are €34 billion; Microsoft, €47 billion; Google, €4.5 billion; and Meta, €2.9 billion, but apparently, they need a tax break. They need even more incentives. We are increasing our reliance on them when what we should be doing is diversifying our economy and developing a sustainable economy that will not be dependent on these people by investing in our students in further and higher education. We are going to give them another tax handout on top of the massive tax handouts they are getting. I will make another couple of comparisons. A total of 10,000 PhD researchers are going to be protesting tomorrow outside the gates of the Dáil. The vast majority of them are on stipends of €25,000 a year or less, working, teaching and doing research in our third level and higher level institutions for less than the minimum wage. It is shocking, when we think of the obscene salaries of the CEOs of the companies I am talking about. If, however, we were to give them a stipend of the grand total of €30,000 a year, which is not exactly a lot of money, that would cost €330 million or approximately the same amount as the Government gave away in tax breaks to the capitalists in the previous budget, those who are already making obscene profits and beneficiaries of massive tax breaks every year. The sheer scale of the tax breaks is unbelievable. Here is another one relief that has built up as well. I submit these questions every year and sometimes the figures of what certain minimum tax measures being imposed on the capitalists might surprise me. Here is one that has been costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office - a financial transaction tax, FTT, which exists in quite a few other countries. Just so people know how minimal it is, an FTT would be a 0.1% tax on the trading in shares and a 0.01% on the trading in derivatives - an infinitesimal tax on those who are not going out to work hard early in the morning but who are benefiting from that fact that they can trade shares and derivatives on their computers because they are already millionaires and multimillionaires making money off money, which, by the way, is not a victimless crime because when these guys' shares go up in value, that money is coming from the workers' pockets. If we put a financial transaction tax of 0.1% on the trading of shares, the Parliamentary Budget Office tells us that would raise €6.5 billion in extra tax revenue in one year. People should think about that figure in the context of the public sector strikes and the demands workers are making for pay increases. Let us remind ourselves what the workers got in the budget in USC and income tax changes. They got an increase of between 0.5% and maybe 1.5% in their net income. It was miserable, when they have lost, according to the public sector unions, approximately 5%, another 2% or 3% this year because of inflation and not getting a pay agreement, and what they are going to lose in the next year because of projected inflation. To give every single public sector worker in the country 10% to compensate for lost income as a result of the cost-of-living crisis inflation would cost €3.1 billion or half of an FTT, of that tiny amount on those who speculate in shares and derivatives, so we would have another €3 billion left over to do something else. Does the House know what we could do with the other €3 billion? We have also costed that. We could put price controls on petrol, diesel, home heating oil, electricity and gas to bring them back to the levels they were at before the inflation crisis started. Therefore, for a 0.1% tax on the trading of shares by capitalists in this country, we could give every single public sector worker who was on strike last week a 10% pay increase. We could put price controls on electricity, gas, home heating oil, petrol and diesel to address the energy price hikes that are crippling people to the extent that 500,000 people in this country cannot pay their bills and are going to be afraid to turn on the heating this winter. Some elderly people will die as a result because we get higher mortality rates for elderly people due to conditions like hypothermia during the winter. For a little tax on the capitalists who speculate in shares and derivatives, we could solve all of those problems for the hundreds of thousands of workers and vulnerable people being crucified by the companies that the Government has chosen to give the money away to, and, by the way, that are also helping to drive up energy prices in the first place because they are hoovering up all of our electricity. That is the consolidated impact of the various tax changes the Government has made over many years, and which it is building on this year to give away more money to those who already have it in tax breaks on their wealth and their profits. I find it sickening. Regarding the wealth tax that was mentioned, even the ESRI is now talking about this. It is something we have been advocating for for many years. If we put a 2% tax on the wealth that people have from €3 million up to €50 million, a 3% tax on wealth between €50 million and €1 billion and a 5% tax on wealth over €1 billion, that would raise €9 billion. That is multiples of what I have just talked about. Imagine what we could do with that. This is a tax on those who already have vast amounts of wealth. They would not even feel it. However, it would make a huge difference to working people who are struggling to pay their bills and extortionate rents or house prices and to the many young people who are just deciding they cannot afford this and are going to leave. Some 68% of young people are considering leaving the country because it is too expensive. A relatively minimal tax on the wealth of the multimillionaires and billionaires in this country could produce billions of euro that would help resolve so many of the problems we face in our society. Section 481, the film tax credit, is not in the Bill this year. However, I always raise it at this time of the year because there have been successive changes to the section 481 film tax credit. Like all of these tax expenditures, it continues to be a giveaway. They are a sort of shadow budget that is not really talked about because these tax credits were brought in in previous budgets. Estimates vary as to their worth, but the tax expenditures of various kinds given away to various sectors are at least €20 billion a year, although they are not even talked about. They are just from previous budgets - they are tax loopholes. The one that I have a particular interest in is now worth over €100 million a year to the film industry in this country. By the way, I want to see investment in the film industry, and I think it is right that our tax system is used to try to support the development of things like the film industry. What I find shocking and unacceptable is that, year in, year out, when it is raised by those who work in film, like actors, performers, directors and the film crew who work behind the cameras, it is said that the tax credit worth €100 million and various other handouts that come from other areas of public funding to the film industry are supposed to be conditional on the provision of quality employment and training. At a minimum, that should mean things like the application of fixed-term workers legislation or the application of European directives on copyright for the royalties that actors and performers are supposed to derive from their performances but are taken from them - robbed from them, in my opinion - by film producers who are recipients of the tax giveaway in the film tax credit. We give the film tax credit to the film producers, but they refuse to comply with their obligations under that tax credit to provide quality employment and training, the royalties they should be giving to the actors and performers, and the vindication of the rights of the film crew who work on those film productions but never accumulate rights as workers. The Government should do something about that. It should crack the whip. It should stop giving money to people who refuse to comply with the law or vindicate the rights of actors, performers and film crew.

I dtús báire, cuirim fáilte roimh an mBille. Nuair atá muid ag féachaint ar an mbuiséad, cé go raibh fadhbanna ann agus go raibh daoine ag gearán faoi, is buiséad iontach é. Is buiséad den scoth é. Rinne muid a lán rudaí do mhuintir na hÉireann sa bhuiséad seo. Caithfidh muid féachaint air agus a rá go soiléir go bhfuil sárobair déanta ag an Rialtas, cé go bhfuil fadhbanna fós ann agus nach bhfuil gach rud déanta againn fós. Bhí mé ag léamh an Bhille, agus is doiciméad mór atá ann. Tá sé ar fáil i mBéarla amháin, áfach. Go bhfios dom, níl aon Bhille airgeadais ar fáil againn trí Ghaeilge. Tuigim é sin. B’fhéidir go mbeidh athrú ann i rith an phróisis agus an Bille seo ag dul trí Thithe an Oireachtais. B’fhéidir go bhfuil obair mhór aistriúcháin i gceist le doiciméad chomh mór seo. Ag an am céanna, áfach, má fheiceann muid ar an Acht Airgeadais, 2025, níl aon leagan Gaeilge den Acht sin. Nil na hAchtanna céanna ó 2024 ná 2023 ar fáil i nGaeilge ach oiread. Bíonn muid ag labhairt an t-am ar fad sa Teach seo faoin teanga náisiúnta agus ár dteanga dhúchais agus araile, ach ní bhíonn na doiciméid thábhachtacha seo ar fáil trí Ghaeilge. Ag tosú leis an mbuiséad agus leis an mBille seo, ba cheart go mbeadh siad ar fáil trí Ghaeilge. Ba cheart go mbeadh an Bille seo agus na hAchtanna a luaigh mé ar fáil do mhuintir na Gaeltachta le léamh agus le tuiscint trí Ghaeilge. Cuireann sé sin díomá orm. Tá a fhios agam go bhfuil obair ag baint leis ach, ag an am céanna, is obair thábhachtach í. Ba cheart dúinn í a dhéanamh. Bíonn daoine ag obair sna Ranna Rialtais agus i dTithe an Oireachtais a bhíonn in ann an t-aistriúchán sin a dhéanamh. Is cinnte go bhfuil muid in ann é a dhéanamh, agus ba cheart go ndéanfaí é. This is good legislation. It does a lot of good things for people in Ireland, and it takes a step forward. That does not mean it is perfect or not worthy of criticism in some respects, and I want to go through a couple of things. The first point is really a drafting point that I make quite often. This Bill, which is enormous, is largely illegible to ordinary people. If a citizen picks up this Bill, first, he or she cannot read it without reference to myriad other pieces of legislation that went before it. If I can use an example, section 4, which is the rent tax credit section, is entitled “Amendment of section 473B of Principal Act (rent tax credit)”. In order to properly understand what section 4 of this Finance Bill does, we have to first go back to the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 and look at section 473B of that. However, when we go back to section 473B, that in itself is an amendment. Therefore, it is impossible to read the contents of the Finance Bill, or the Finance Act when it becomes that, without reference to significant other pieces of legislation. The point I make all the time is that in 1997, we managed to pass the Taxes Consolidation Act. On that occasion, although I am sure it was a mammoth piece of work, all of the tax legislation came together in one document. A citizen in 1997 who picked up the Taxes Consolidation Act and read it, because they surely had nothing better to do, could actually read and understand what it said. You cannot do that with modern legislation, and it is true of legislation across these Houses that is being passed all the time. If one reads section 4(1), it states: Section 473B of the Principal Act is amended— (a) in subsection (1), in the definition of “specified amount”— (i) in paragraph (a), by the substitution of “€11,500” for “€10,000”, and (ii) in paragraph (b), by the substitution of “€5,750” for “€5,000”, We know what that means because it is a relatively straightforward section, but actually reading it in isolation, you have no idea what it means. It is a real shame that we cannot get ourselves together in this House to pass consolidated legislation every year because there are only small changes from one Act to the next, and it should be within the capacity of these Houses to change them. There are a couple of things in this Bill that are absolutely worthy of mention. I am broadly in favour of it. I welcome the provisions that it puts in place. One of the things that I had called for a couple of weeks ago was provision to be made for the shingles vaccine to be made available free of charge, particularly for vulnerable people over 65 who are immunocompromised. I welcome the fact that it was announced as part of the budget process that the Bill would make provision for the shingles vaccine, which is incredibly expensive for an individual, to be covered under the scheme. I know that it will start with immunocompromised patients. That is really good. The possibility of contracting shingles is not just incredibly painful and uncomfortable for the patients involved, but will also seriously compromise their ability to live their lives for a period when they are suffering from shingles. I welcome that and the work that was done on that by my colleague, Deputy Colm Burke, in the health committee. HVO, or hydro-treated vegetable oil, is another issue. It is a perfectly adequate substitute for diesel motor oil, the thing that we put in our diesel cars, but it produces 90% less carbon. It does not produce soot, carbon monoxide or nitrous oxides the way diesel does. It is a progressive, sustainable fuel, yet a litre of HVO costs exactly the same as a litre of diesel. I do not understand why we cannot build into this legislation a genuine tax incentive for people who are driving diesel cars to use HVO instead of diesel. It is much better for the air, but it should be better for their pockets as well, and we cannot expect them to do it, and we cannot expect the companies that supply that product to roll it out across the country when there is not the demand for it, when the incentives have not been put in place for it. The last time I put HVO into my car, it was exactly the same price as diesel. Notwithstanding that, I raised this as a Topical Issue in the House previously, and I was told that the carbon tax would be the difference, in that it would not apply to HVO because HVO was a biofuel, yet there it is at the pumps and it is exactly the same price. It is not beyond us to create an incentive for something that we know is good for the environment as well as for vehicles. There is no need for new infrastructure, modification of vehicles or anything like that. Section 17 of the Bill deals with the help to buy scheme. I make the same criticism of how it is drafted. It amends section 477C of the principal Act and is totally illegible in the absence of section 477C and the other amending legislation that brought us to that in the 1997 Act. The help to buy scheme is obviously important and I welcome it. It is capped at €500,000. I understand why that is, because the purpose of the help to buy scheme is not to provide help for people to buy big, expensive houses around the country. I represent the constituency of Dún Laoghaire. I do not believe there is a family home in my constituency for less than €500,000. I hear people in this House saying "pity about you" and so on, but pity about the young people who were born and grew up in Dún Laoghaire and want to live near their parents and their support networks. The cost of property is keeping them out, yet the help to buy scheme that we put in place to help first-time buyers, particularly all over the country, is not available in Dún Laoghaire. People in Dún Laoghaire cannot use it, and it is a real blind spot here in the legislation that we do not recognise the documented, statistical fact that in certain areas of the country like Dún Laoghaire, property prices are higher. That should be recognised in many ways, but the obvious one is in the help to buy scheme, to acknowledge the fact that we need to put more resources into it in places like Dún Laoghaire than places where property prices are lower. I regret that section 17 makes no provision whatsoever for the people I represent in Dún Laoghaire. It is unfortunate and a missed opportunity. Childcare is important and I welcome that we are introducing the cap of €550. I welcome the progress that has been made in that respect, bringing it down from over €700. We are on the way, I hope, to €200, as promised by multiple parties in this House during the last general election. We need to make more progress but I welcome this particular step along the journey. What about parents in band F centres who do not benefit from this cap? We have a problem in Dún Laoghaire and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown generally where there are more and more centres - some 25% of childcare providers - that are outside the scheme. We need to support all families, not just families who happen to live near a childcare facility that is within the scheme. We need to look at this very carefully. I have raised this time and again. If we are not designing a scheme that actually works for the childcare providers, we are not going to achieve the promise that we made to the voters of Ireland to provide childcare for them at reasonable rates. I welcome the changes relating to capital acquisitions tax. They are something I have been asking for. It is important and disproportionately affects people in my constituency because of the cost of houses. Often, children whose parents die cannot assume the family home because of the tax burden that comes with it, particularly if they are only children. The increase from €400,000 to €420,000 in the group A increase is welcome progress. We were at €500,000 before the crash. Property prices are back to where they were at that time and above, so let us get back up to where they were then. That is group A, and that ignores the fact that for group B and group C, although there are also increases, there is still significant discrimination against people who do not have children. This is something that other Members here have raised before. I have raised it. There is a gap in the provision if there is to be a discount in capital acquisitions tax for people who are close to the person who has died. That person worked and paid for the property with a taxed income, and if they pass it on to somebody, we recognise that there are times that that is appropriate and we afford a reduction in the case of groups A and B. Although we have changed the threshold for group C, there is discrimination against people who, for whatever reason, do not have children, nieces, nephews or immediate family members to whom they can pass on a property. That is something that we should be looking at in earnest with a view to addressing that disparity in the law. I have been listening to this debate both today and around the time of the budget, and I listened to the talk about consolidating wealth inequality. It is important to recognise that we have what is widely recognised as one of the most progressive taxation systems in Europe. That should not be ignored. It is good. I heard reference to tax breaks for investors who already had vast sums of money. That is to totally and fundamentally misunderstand, for example, the investment scheme that has been put into this budget. It will allow people - not those with vast sums of money, but much smaller investors - to get on the investment ladder and join that community, which is good for them as individuals, but it is limited to €12,000 per year. It is also good for the country, because we lag way behind Europe in the amount of money that private individuals have invested here, which is therefore money that is actually working for them. That is the misunderstanding in criticising any tax break that might be in it for an investor. What investing is is using your money to actually work for you, whereas Deputy Boyd Barrett appears to think that it is something that is only for the uber-wealthy. That is not true. There is a lot of good here, but there is also a lot more to do, and I hope we will do that next year.

At a time when households across the State face rising costs, budget 2027 was an opportunity for the Government to prioritise the needs of workers and families over the greed of vested interests. In this budget, the Government could have delivered supports to households who most need it through tax measures that put money directly in their pockets, but instead the Government has chosen to prioritise those on the highest incomes. In the weeks before budget 2027, the Tánaiste was flat-out telling everybody that help was on its way, but the reality is that this turned out to be yet another empty promise. In the Finance Bill, the Government has decided that people on the lowest incomes - over 1.5 million workers - should receive the least out of budget 2027 while the likes of the banks, the vulture funds and the big energy companies remain untouched. These vested interests make extraordinary profits off the backs of ordinary Irish people, yet the Government continues to make sure that they are looked after. This year, the Government has also made sure to look after the CEOs of State companies. This Government has been happy to give CEOs massive pay rises, with the likes of the CEO of Uisce Éireann getting a €118,000 pay rise this year alone. However, the Government is now telling low-income workers to be happy with a €250 increase to their tax credits, which works out at less than €5 a week, which will be gone before they even get it with the rising cost of everyday essentials. Clearly the Government has its priorities all wrong, but this is the track record of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, and budget 2027 is just another chapter in this record. I also want to raise the new derelict property tax that has been announced and that will see collection powers transferred to Revenue. While I welcome this aspect of the legislation, I am extremely concerned that this will only apply to population centres of more than 4,000 people. I have raised here with the Tánaiste on multiple occasions the case of the former Shannon Oaks Hotel in Portumna, County Galway. That hotel has been left in a dangerous, derelict condition for the past 15 years. It is not secured. It is a serious safety hazard. It is attracting antisocial behaviour and it is a real eyesore in that village. As it stands, the planning permission the owners had in place to redevelop it has now run out which means there are no plans to redevelop the hotel as it stands. Under the population requirement rules that have been introduced for the derelict property tax, this hotel would be exempt from that tax. That is an outrageous proposition for people in Portumna. The Government needs to ensure that property owners are penalised and actually held accountable for as long as they allow this building to be left in an appalling and unsafe condition right in the town centre. The local community is fed up with this being allowed to continue indefinitely. We need a derelict property tax with real teeth that is going to tackle property hoarding and incentivise owners to redevelop homes and buildings or, at least, if they are not willing to do that, to move them on to somebody who will. I want to use this opportunity to encourage the Government to engage on this site. The members of Galway County Council have put forward suggestions for acquiring the site to make it safe and to seek out new owners. I ask the Government to examine this and offer any support necessary for the council to deal with this and, hopefully, find a suitable person to redevelop the hotel.

As Deputy Ward said, I think this budget may have been a missed opportunity. To me, it was a missed opportunity. To Independent Ireland, it was a missed opportunity. We put forward many positions that were different from what would be the usual rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul type of budget, and they were not listened to. It could have been a bold budget that looked after young families and was mainly concerned with young people who are thinking of leaving the country. They are leaving in droves out of this country as we speak. Some 68% of them are talking about leaving. It is hard to blame them because they know in a few years' time, following this budget, they will not have a home. They will not be able to afford a home and will not be able to afford to stay here. Obviously, the details of the budget will come out as we go on. I have concerns that perhaps the Minister of State will be able to clarify. In relation to respite, we had a protest for adults with intellectual disabilities, where a couple of hundred people walked the streets of Bantry on Sunday, fighting for what I see as the basic human right that is respite. Protests took place in Bantry and Skibbereen in west Cork. The funding is not factored into the budget. Funding for staffing is not factored in there. It is not being delivered and these people are suffering. I have told them I have raised this issue in Dáil Éireann and I will continue to raise it on a more frequent basis. We need to understand that people with intellectual disability are treated appallingly in this country, whether it is in relation to respite or in relation to transport, because they are left at home. They have no voice bar their parents, and their parents are burnt out from being loving and caring carers who have not been looked after by this Government that promised it would deliver a non-means-tested carers payment in the budget. That has not happened again this year. The Government is raising the bands, and I accept that, but it is not good enough. Just because the husband might have two or three extra cows that takes him across the means threshold and they cannot get carer's allowance. They are at home minding a loved one and they still cannot get this funding. The same is true of housing. If you have an intellectual disability, you are left behind in this country when it comes to housing. You have to fight for everything. That is why the Before We Die campaign was set up by a lot of families of people with intellectual disabilities. It puts extra pressure on them. They are delivering the care service and they are now trying to deliver the service that the Government should have delivered for them and that has not happened. I want to move on to the budget and how it relates to stem cell treatment. There is €27 million needed for a stem cell unit in Cork University Hospital, and I am not sure whether that is factored into the budget this year. It is very important. There was a big get-together in the audiovisual room recently. I am calling on the Minister for Health to outline where her budget is going to be spent. It cannot always go into the children's hospital here in Dublin. There has to be more spent equally around Ireland, so the rest of the country gets benefits. A campaign for a stem cell unit has been fronted by Mags McCarthy and many more who are desperately trying to get it across the line. It is available in Dublin and Galway, and rightly so, but it should also be available in the south and south-west. We need it in Cork University Hospital, and I would like to know if that is in the budget. The Minister of State might let us know about that. We know the Government gave Uisce Éireann's CEO €118,000. We are well aware of that nice little pat on the back for God only knows, because I do not know. He is not accountable to anybody in here, bar maybe one or two Ministers, but he certainly is not accountable to the TDs here. We are contacting Uisce Éireann in relation to issues such as the one in Ballydehob, where there is stinking sewage going into the tide, and at Goleen, Rosscarbery and Shannonvale, and we get nothing. We get no response. It is a disgraceful carry-on, and then the Government rewards somebody for that instead of making them accountable and seeing that they deliver. What about the roads budget in west Cork? It has been absolutely starved of funding for passing bays and for bypasses at Innishannon, Bantry and Bandon. All these are proposed bypasses over the last 20 years and there is no tar laid on the ground. There are plenty of plans. Every year there are a couple of million euro thrown into a plan to top up the other plan. Are there passing bays provided for in the budget? Is there a budget for west Cork other than walkways, cycleways and greenways, which people are not looking for? The majority of people do not want them going through their farm, but they do want proper roadways so they can pass vehicles coming and going in a natural, fair and safe manner, and not have a situation where they are holding onto their steering wheel going into potholes left, right and centre on main arteries going into Cork like the N71. What about the fishing industry? What is in the budget for the fishing industry? I know we spoke about the farming industry, but the fishing industry is on its knees. Is there a budget set aside for the people who lost their quota? They have not been able to go out fishing for the last six or 12 months in some cases. They have huge trawlers. Those smaller fishermen should be looked after in the budget. We would like to know all that.

I was watching the debate from my office on the monitors. It was interesting to listen to the contribution from Deputy Boyd Barrett, in particular about Apple, which is in my constituency and employs over 6,500 people. He mentioned EMC in Ballincollig, which is also in my constituency. He mentioned Dairygold and a number of companies that operate in Little Island. Again, they are all big employers that operate in my constituency. To listen to him vilifying international companies, there are times when I am in the Chamber that I often think of people buying tickets to the Gaiety Theatre who could come to sit in the Visitors Gallery and have the entertainment for free. What went on over there in the socialist party and their grouping was nothing short of a pantomime performance. To say that we do not need these companies such as Apple, employing 6,500 people, or EMC, ignores the sheer number of people dependent on those businesses. There are 200,000 jobs in this country from foreign direct investment alone and there are an additional 150,000 jobs that come with them. Does Deputy Boyd Barrett ever worry or think about the fact that the guy who works in Apple, who is my constituent, comes back and buys his coffee in Cork North-Central, buys his shopping in the local shop, goes out and has his few pints on a Friday night in the local pub and spends his money locally in the economy? Deputy Boyd Barrett talks with great ambition about encompassing diversity and the rest of it on a regular basis in this House, but he forgets about the fact that 95 languages are spoken in Apple every day on the northside of Cork city. That is something I am immensely proud of. I am immensely proud of the foreign direct investment we have been able to attract into Cork North-Central, and of the hard work done by various TDs over the years to get that investment. They talk about these big companies and the profits they are making but forget about the number of Irish people they are employing and the number of businesses that are dependent on those foreign direct investment companies. We should not be letting people get away with that, because it is a pantomime. There are things I want to welcome in the budget. One, which was mentioned earlier, is the shingles vaccine. That is very welcome. I remember on one of my first days in this House I mentioned that in a Leaders' Question, and I am delighted to see that somebody listened to me on that side of the House. Every now and again I have a good idea. Maybe the Government might take on a few more of them over the next couple of weeks. I am disappointed we have not moved more quickly on GLP-1 medication. It is vitally important. As we look to the next 20 years and what we are spending in this country on medication for diabetes, and on preventative measures for heart disease and the rest of it, we are missing a beat. We are not looking to the next generation. If we made GLP-1 medication more readily available and much cheaper to the general public, we would be looking at a far healthier Ireland in the next 20 years. I ask the Minister of State to consider that in the coming budgets. I will call out the good things and I will call out the bad things, which I think is being fair with the Minister for State. There are parts of this budget which giveth with one hand and taketh away with the other. There are plans for excise cuts but they only last until 28 February 2027 and after that they come back in, in stages, in February, April, May, and October 2027. We will see an increase in the price of petrol from 50 cent to 74 cent. We will see an increase in diesel from 37 cent to 60 cent per litre by October 2027. The reality for commuters who live in my constituency and in the Minister of State's constituency and use an average of 1,200 litres per year is they will be paying an extra €420 for petrol and diesel. That is the average. I want to touch on something else that was said in this House regarding the 7% of market value going to Revenue when it comes to derelict properties. I have been banging the drum about derelict properties for the past 18 years when I was on Cork City Council and I welcome this, but I have questions around it. How is the local authority going to take it on? Will moneys be provided to each local authority to employ staff who will be dedicated to the collection of those moneys for derelict properties? I have concerns about the 4,000 plus and we should look at that as well.

This Finance Bill is another example of a Government living in a bubble. The Ministers do not stay awake during the night wondering what bills they can afford to pay this year. This Finance Bill is another ignorant example of ignoring the lives of real people in Ireland. I would like to introduce the Minister of State to some real citizens and I will read out some of the letters that have been sent to me since the budget: Hi Peadar, I have seen you many times sticking up for the ordinary people and I would like to give you another insight into a young family in 2026. My partner and I have two children on earth. One is four and the other is a newborn child. I recently lost two children to stillbirth and miscarriage. I am on maternity and as such I am trying to give my body some time to recover after years of pregnancy. We do not own a home. We got evicted last year from our rented accommodation, after we lost our child through stillbirth, due to the landlord selling it. We moved into a relation's abandoned house which has no insulation, thick cavity walls and only has had its first kerosene boiler fitted after we moved in. Without kerosene, there is no hot water. We have to buy a drum on a weekly basis just to wash the dishes, which costs us €50 per drum and it lasts for only a few days. A 300 litre buy of kerosene lasts for a few weeks but our house is still cold and I cannot afford to fill it, even after the fuel payment. The roof needs to be fixed and every room needs replacing. It would cost up to €200,000 to do so. We can't get a mortgage, we can't get grants because we don't own the house, and we can't get loans because I was bitten during the recession by college loans, which never amounted to a job. Our generation has no hope. My daughter realises we have nothing; not even proper floors in some rooms. The owner of the house wants more rent money but we cannot afford it. We live week to week buying groceries and clothes for the children. I do not eat because it costs so much. I drink coffee. I have yogurts and maybe a dinner every day. I closed my seven-year hair business because there was no crèche place for my daughter and I will not be able to return until God knows how long. For now, we live on little money, running out every week in a house that is falling apart, full of mould. I am 40 soon. My partner is 38. Sometimes I can't tell if I'm so stressed or that I've ended up with postnatal depression, trying to survive. I love my children but it's hard to be able to look after them properly. Trying to keep a newborn warm, clean and fed is hard in 2026. We have been failed by this Government. We did not cause the recession. We are victims to it and we will be paying the price until we retire. Neither of us have careers that will last until retirement. I dread the future for the children of this country. I believe that the Government should put the shoe on the other foot and see how it is for us to live, to see if they could live on social welfare or the minimum wage. It would boost the RTÉ ratings at least. I understand the money has to come from somewhere but while the Government squanders money other people like us would do great things with it. Please don't mention my name. This is not from the 19th century. This is Ireland under this Government. This is an Irish citizen today. I will read out correspondence from another individual. I write this email from my bedroom in my parents' home which I share with my two children. Do I work? Yes, I work for the public sector. We are one of those forgotten families of Ireland. I get up at 5 a.m. in the morning to go to work and I am lucky if I get back at 9 p.m. I work hard in the public sector and have two amazing children. I fall into the category of being too rich for social housing and too poor to have a mortgage. Did I mention that my child has autism, which I pay privately for therapies because the Government cannot provide this and does not provide therapies for my child. A family can earn €2,300, get carer's allowance, working family payment and the one parent family payment but I can't because I have to work, because I have to afford the therapies for my child and just to survive the cost-of-living crisis. I do not have the luxury of not working. It is an absolute insult to call this budget one for the working families. I heard from another family: I am a 31-year-old homeowner from County Meath, a father of one, soon to be married and I work in the public service. I write to you because I want to express my genuine frustration with the current tax system and the financial pressure being placed on ordinary, hard-working people in this country. Every morning, I leave my house at approximately 5.30 a.m. and travel to the Dublin area, often arriving between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m., depending on the traffic. My journey involves going from Meath towards Dundrum and then onto Clondalkin. Along the way I pass through three tolls: two at €2.70 and one on the M50 which I understand is approximately €4.90 for my vehicle. That means I am paying up to €51 a week on tolls. I do not take the tolls on the way home because I simply can't afford them, but if forces me to drive further which means I am burning more diesel. I accept that working comes with expenses and I understand that taxation is necessary to fund public services. However, increasingly I feel that people who get up early in the morning, who work hard and try to provide for their families are being squeezed in every single direction. This budget confirms the squeeze of middle-income earners. Many people with two incomes coming into the family home are unable to make ends meet because on one side, the Government is engineering a cost-of-living crisis by overtaxing energy. Today, the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, put €41 extra on electricity.

Looking at the Second Stage of this Finance (No. 2) Bill, anyone with a smidgeon of social conscience and even a basic understanding of fiscal prudence would say that we are going about things the wrong way. We are considered to be in full employment but the core strategy of this Bill, as I said in previous contributions, is to inject lots of euros into stimulating demand, when we have a choice to actually take on board the repeated warnings of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council. By pushing ahead with what I would call untargeted tax cuts and short-term similarly untargeted cash boosts, this budget is giving with one hand but inflation will take it back with the other. I suggest that even allowing for the absolute need to give a dig-out to those impacted by fuel increases and price hikes, the real fiscal responsibility at a time when we do have some revenues to spare and we have to help people means acknowledging the bottlenecks in the system. The greatest threat to the cost of living for ordinary families is not necessarily tinkering with the tax bands and saying here is a few extra quid for them, but by tackling the structural deficits in our public infrastructure. Otherwise, we are reusing this term "voodoo economics" coined back in the day during Reagan's time because if a marginal increase in workers' take-home pay is given, from a tax perspective, it is wiped out instantly if they have to pay for private childcare, private healthcare, private assessments of need and private grinds, all because our public services are understaffed and, in many cases, overwhelmed. We are talking about childcare. People have no choice but to drive and pay high fuel prices because they cannot suddenly switch to an EV if they have a petrol or diesel car, and that is if they have a car. Others will have to get a taxi because in many cases no decent public transport is available. Instead of giving general money to spend, our funding should be used to build long-term economic resilience through services. As I have mentioned before, in the medium term we have to guard against data centre progression using so much of our capacity, which increases our reliance on gas and pushes up the price even as renewables increase. I have mentioned the significant investment needed to upgrade our grid and be energy self-sufficient and a net exporter, something which has huge revenue potential. That is a multi-annual project and we need to get moving on it now, using windfall receipts, borrowing strategically and partnering to increase capacity and cut costs. We need to focus on the annual budget side. Specifically, we have to invest directly in the permanent recruitment of critical front-line staff, most notably teachers, gardaí, social workers, occupational therapists and bus drivers. When a school has enough teachers to function and a hospital has enough nurses to clear its waiting lists, we lower the structural cost of living in a sustainable manner. Instead, we are adding to costs by failing to keep our homegrown staff. They are going abroad. Nurses, for example, are going abroad because they are not offered permanent posts. We are leveraging expensive agency services. When our best and brightest emigrate, we import staff to do the same work but increase our costs overall due to strains on housing and education through family reunification, etc. It is a regressive strategy. We should instead provide upfront investment in our own people and protect our public servants by index-linking pay rather than relying on cute hoor budgetary adjustments that look good on paper but add to inflation. We have to protect services and our front-line workers and keep our costs down. That is what should be done.

I welcome the Minister of State and congratulate the Minister, Simon Harris, on his first budget presentation to the House. Last year, we emphasised that we were taking care of and trying to support businesses, and rightly so. A permanent change took place. There was a debate here on the reduction in VAT for hospitality and other areas. This year, the emphasis is clearly on trying to help workers and families by giving them back more of their money. The increase in the threshold is important and welcome. Over the coming budgets, we need to move towards a €15,000 threshold for people to hit the higher rate of tax. As I always say, if we do not increase the thresholds regularly, more and more people will pay the higher rate of tax. If we do not increase them at all, eventually the majority of people will, year on year, pay the higher rate of tax. That needs to be acknowledged. I have heard people use the term "tinkering around". I do not believe that is fair. It is about increasing the thresholds to allow people to keep more of their money so that they can spend it on themselves and their families and pay for some additional costs in the economy at present because of the goings-on in the Strait of Hormuz and decisions elsewhere. We have tried to respond to the challenges elsewhere as part of this budget. We have also accepted the increase in the minimum wage. It is fair for those workers on the lowest level to get assistance. It is a cost to business, and we should not pretend it is not. As I always say, you cannot have employees without employers and you cannot have employers without employees. They go hand in hand. It is right that where we give on the one hand in terms of assistance to low-paid workers through increases in the minimum wage, we also consider support for businesses. That was done through the change to PRSI. The budget thresholds were important. There is an increase in the higher rate income tax threshold to €46,500 from €44,000 and an increase in the main tax credits by €125, saving the average worker €750 and a couple €1,500 per year. That is important and should be welcomed. As I said, I hope to see progression on that in the coming budgets. I want to talk about section 17 of the Bill, the help to buy scheme. It gives a refund of income tax and DIRT that people have paid in this country for the previous four years. The maximum people can claim under the scheme increased from €30,000 to €35,000 in the budget, and applies from 7 October 2026. It relates to people who sign a contract for a new house between 7 October 2026 and 31 October 2029 or draw down on a self-build mortgage between 7 October 2026 and 31 December 2029. This is hugely important assistance that has been provided by the Government and needs to be acknowledged. In Galway, to the third quarter of this year, some 3,316 individuals and families have benefited, with claims totalling €77.3 million. That demonstrates the benefits of the scheme and the value it has in supporting families who are trying to buy or build their first home. I want to touch on section 75, the residential zoned land, RZL, tax. I have heard anecdotally that it is working in forcing certain parcels of land to be put on the market or developed. That is the intent of the scheme. In his budget speech this year, the Minister stated he is now providing another opportunity for landowners in 2027 whereby if they seek to have their land rezoned to reflect the genuine economic activity being carried out, an exemption will be considered by local authorities. Again, there is some confusion because people have gone through processes to get their land rezoned and have been unable to do so. Do they now have another opportunity to do so or does the provision relate to additional zonings? Perhaps we could get some clarity on that. It is causing a certain amount of stress. I know of individuals affected by this, one of whom is in his late 80s. He is not worried about what happens after he is gone because that will not bother him, but he has a great love for a small piece of land that is zoned. People are facing difficulties and I know the importance of land. The State has invested in servicing land with water and sewerage and, therefore, parcels of land have to be built on. That is what the scheme is trying to address. There is some confusion about the announcement of another opportunity in 2027. Does that relate to the same people or different people? Section 76 deals with the derelict property tax. Again, I welcome the initiative because we have had the carrot approach and the stick approach, and the carrot has worked in terms of the croí cónaithe scheme and above-the-shop grants have benefited. It is not necessarily about collecting money. Rather, it is about bringing properties back into use as homes, turning bigger properties into apartments and making use of other buildings. We all want more homes built and more people living in properties. Local authorities have faced challenges in collecting that money. The move will see the Revenue Commissioners given such powers. Most people accept a letter from Revenue as a stronger threat or stick than a letter from a local authority. It is hoped the change will get some parcels moving, not necessarily in terms of collecting tax but encouraging people to avail of grants and get properties back to life or incentivising individuals to sell properties to realise some capital and allow others to develop them. In a recent meeting with the city manager and officials, one issue raised was the fact that Revenue, as it stands, will keep the moneys collected, and whether that should remain the case. Local authorities would like that money to be reimbursed to them to assist in the administration of the scheme and for their work and the services they provide. Is the policy in the Finance Bill set in stone? Perhaps it is something we could reflect on over the next period of time. Local authorities have been blamed and some have been better than others. If the tax could be retained locally, that would be of benefit. I refer to supporting older people and the new cost-of-disability payment of €500. We all know the additional costs that families of children with disabilities have. I welcome the payment and also that we have taken another step on the carer's allowance income disregard. Again, this was a commitment I think all parties made before the previous election. We moved substantially last year and there has been another increase in this budget, meaning the disregard is now €1,150 for single people and €2,300 for a couple. I also welcome the increase in the renter's tax credit to €1,150 for single people and €2,300 for couples. Another area that is hugely important and linked to the growing economy is capital investment. While construction inflation has impacted the value of that investment, we need to continue to invest in infrastructure for our growing economy. I welcome the commitment to the Galway city ring road. It is at the stage where the judicial review appeal will be held next month. There were four applicants to that review and three have been withdrawn and have been sorted. I hope for a speedy decision on the remaining one before the end of the year and that we can get that project moving. We have been talking about it for nearly two decades in various guises. It has had its ups and downs, refusals, quashings and everything else, but it was finally granted and we are now coming to the end of the judicial review process. I hope, with a continued strong economy, we can look at projects like this. This is obviously about making Galway a more attractive place to invest, especially in the west of the city, and also improving the quality of life of people in the city and Connemara as well. Public transport is another area that is continually raised. Strangely, though intuitively it makes sense, the more you invest in bus routes and frequency, the more demand grows because it is a more reliable and better service. As demand grows, you have to invest in capacity, which is a challenge we are experiencing. We see it with the 424 route and Barna, on which, fortunately, there is good news coming. We need to see continued investment in commuter areas in and around Galway city, for example, the 419 service to Moycullen, Oughterard and Clifden. There are new bus shelters in Moycullen, where there is a growing population, and in the last seven or eight years there has been increased frequency. We need to see even greater frequency and more capacity, so we do not have full buses passing people by. A strong economy is not just about the big projects, but also the day-to-day issues that improve people's lives. Fortunately, we are in a better position and we can now look at these projects and continue to invest in them. I am particularly worried about energy costs. Kerosene has been a big issue for rural Ireland. We have done a bit. I am not sure we have done enough. Time will tell. If we get a particularly hard winter, the temporary business energy support scheme, TBESS. will have to revisited in some guise. I advocated for an increase in the living alone allowance, which increased for the first time in five years. It would have been nice to see a slightly larger increase because filling a tank of oil costs a couple the same as it does a single person, widow or widower who must bear it on one income instead of two. This is a concern and I had hoped for a lump sum or a greater increase in the living alone allowance, although I certainly welcome the first increase in about five years.

While the Finance Bill is being praised by the Government, along with the tax cuts made in the budget, and we heard statements that the budget was for those who get up early in the morning, the truth is that the working person is still struggling to make ends meet. Many minimum wage workers are telling me they would be better off staying at home as they would qualify for the medical card, free travel, fuel allowance, supplementary welfare payments and a social house. While the carbon tax applied to kerosene home heating oil and natural gas has been reduced to €48.50 and paused at this rate, it should be removed completely as many people are struggling to keep up with the payments for heating their homes. The Government should not be profiting from the increases in cost. I made clear previously that the Government was able to manage with the amount of tax it was collecting before the cost went up, so it should still be able to manage with that. It also needs to be highlighted that while the tax has been reduced on natural gas, the same reduction has not been extended to liquid gas. There is no reduction for the fellas who are buying tanks of gas at €50 a go, and a lot more for the bigger ones. That is very unfair. While the farmers' fuel relief scheme is being extended, it is only for those who qualified in the summer. Surely it should be available to all those who would be entitled to it, if it were not for this clause that is preventing that. Action on green diesel for construction vehicles was promised back in May by the Taoiseach and Tánaiste but nothing has been done since. Words do not mean much. Pensioners were on to me this morning very early saying they cannot manage if they are on their own. The increase in the living alone allowance was shameful. I said here before that €3 would not buy a cup of coffee or a bar of chocolate and if you showed it to a young fella of eight or nine, he would be looking at you wondering where you were going with it. Families who have students attending third level education where both parents and the student are working may qualify for €500 from SUSI or nothing at all. That is not enough. With the third level fees and the mere €150 increase in the rent tax credit a parent can claim for a student near college, these working families tell me every day they are getting no help from the Government when they have been paying taxes for years. I extend my sympathies to the English family in Waterford which has lost four members, with two others seriously injured. I understand they were targeted due to a drug debt of a family member. This is a terrible outrage and we must get to grips with it because there are a lot of drugs coming to our shores. We are not manning our shores and many rural Garda stations were closed down. When a family member gets addicted to drugs they cannot pay their debt and then family members, including mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, are targeted. This is an awful situation and I appeal to the Government to do its best. It has been highlighted by other Members that Ballyheigue does not have any drinkable water. This has gone on for two weeks. Has the Government an emergency budget to address this water contamination? Apparently seawater has got into the supply. I have been told by many locals what happened there. They stopped taking water from the Glenderry area to the west on Kerry Head and left Ballyheigue supplying water to the entire area. Ballyheigue was not able to keep its supply full and people are saying that is how the saltwater got in. People are asking that this well be closed for a fortnight or three weeks to see if it will clear because it is still supplying toilets, cattle and everything. Otherwise it will never come up to the level it needs to come up to in order to see whether it will clear. If it does not clear, it will have to be forgotten about. To that end, we need to open up Glenderry again. People are saying it is not suitable for drinking but it could be used for toilets, washing and everything else and give the Ballyheigue supply a chance to clear. Killarney water comes as far as the village of Ardfert, which is 5 miles or 6 miles down the road from Ballyheigue. Could this water supply be extended to Ballyheigue? This will take a bit, but Irish Water must have a plan. Water could be brought from the Listowel area. There is plenty of water, but Irish Water needs to get working and laying pipes and that will cost money. The Government says it has no problem in giving it money. I appeal to the Minister of State to ensure that the people in this massive catchment area are not left behind any longer. Let us suppose they bring the water from Ardfert - the Killarney water as we call it - from Lough Guitane. There is no problem in laying the pipes as there is a grand wide margin from Ardfert out to Ballyheigue. There are link roads so that the road will not be blocked or anything. It could be done in two weeks if there were two crews at it day and night. It could be done if the Government gives the money. On top of that, Kerry has fallen well behind the standards we were used to for the provision of water. The Lough Guitane supply comes grand as far as Coolcorcoran in the heart of Killarney, but the pipe going from Coolcorcoran to Scartaglin reservoir needs to be increased and expanded so that there will be enough water for the hospital in Tralee and all the places it has been providing water to for many years. This scheme was put in place about 60 years ago and it is an asbestos pipe. The pipe needs to be taken out of there. I am sure they could lay a new pipe alongside it or go a different way so that there would not be too much interruption. A lot of work needs to be done. Could the Minister of State talk to the Minister, Deputy Browne, the Taoiseach and all the other members of the Government who are linked in any way to this problem and could help to sort it out? This has to be a priority. I appeal to the Minister of State. I got the flu in recent days but I still came up because I wanted to highlight this serious issue on behalf of the people of Ballyheigue, Causeway, Kilmoyley, Linderry and Kerry Head – all those places cannot be left without water. It is two weeks' now today. What progress has been made? I will be back here next week with the help of God and I will ask again to see what progress has been made. I will ask about it tomorrow. Nothing could be more serious than to leave people without potable drinkable water. The other question that farmers are asking is if it is safe for the animals to be drinking the salt water because they have nothing else apart from a few streams here and there. All these things need to be teased out. I appeal to the Minister of State to sort this out. We must start by closing down Ballyheigue and getting water somewhere else. We can see if the salt will clear in Ballyheigue and if it does not, it will have to be completely forgotten about. This happened with wells in the past. People had to move on. It is hard to understand it, as the Ballyheigue well is high above the strand and the ocean, but anything can happen, and that is what has happened. I appeal to the Minister of State. I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for granting me the indulgence to raise it with him. Nothing could be more serious than to be without water. The people of Kerry whom I represent in Ballyheigue, Causeway, down as far as Ardfert and up as far as Linderry – all those places need water as good as anywhere else. Like I have said before, the people in those places are entitled to everything that the people in Dublin 4 get. I appeal to the Minister of State's good offices and to the Taoiseach to sort this out because it needs to be sorted out today before tomorrow.

I thank all the Deputies for their contributions to the Finance Bill this evening. To be fair to Deputy Danny Healy-Rae, he did acknowledge that I am not responsible for the water in Kerry. I will pass on the points that he raised this evening to the relevant Minister.

I know that the Minister of State is not responsible but I hold him responsible with the Government.

If Deputy Healy-Rae had waited until I finished responding, to be fair, I was saying that I would raise it with the person responsible. I will do that. If the Deputy had stayed supporting the Government he might have a little bit more influence, but anyway that is not the case. Deputy Collins raised the point that it is not a budget for west Cork. It is not a budget for any particular area; it is a national budget that brings about taxation measures and gives effect to the budget. I agree with Deputy Flynn, who says that on occasion here it could be The Gaiety, but some might say that he plays it up on occasion himself also. The core of this budget is about supporting people who need help today while ensuring the Government retains the fiscal capacity to support those who may need help tomorrow. Every decision we make in respect of public finances has a direct impact on our ability to respond to future crises. We must treat public finances with respect, especially given the heightened international uncertainty we face. Across Europe, governments are being forced to make difficult decisions on spending and taxation. Ireland, by contrast, enters this period with record employment and budget surpluses. This position did not happen by accident. It reflects decisions taken over many years to maintain a competitive economy, support employment and manage our public finances responsibly. We cannot take that strength for granted. I acknowledge that we have an issue in relation to our over-reliance on corporation tax. That is why the Government established two future funds and why in this budget alone we put an additional €1 billion on top of the €4.8 billion that is committed this year, recognising that we must put away our excess corporation tax and also put excess corporation tax into capital expenditure. It was a record budget for roads and housing. I am somewhat amazed at some of the contributions by Deputies over the course of the debate here this evening. Some Deputies criticised people who create wealth and foreign direct investment companies who choose to invest in Ireland, who create not tens of thousands of jobs, but hundreds of thousands of jobs. They do not just create jobs directly in their own workplaces but they also give the people who work in them a real and meaningful income that they can go out and spend in the domestic economy, supporting shops and the hospitality sector. These are real jobs. I do not think any government should make an apology for ensuring that we remain attractive and competitive as an economy and not only retain the FDI that is located in Ireland but attract new FDI that could potentially come to Ireland. I acknowledge the incredibly good work the IDA does in this regard. Next year we will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the International Financial Services Centre, IFSC - a vision set out by Charles J. Haughey back in 1987. Who would have thought 40 years later that there would be 61,000 jobs in the international financial services sector? Of the 61,000 jobs that are directly created in this sector, 25% of them are in the regions. They are real, quality jobs across the regions of Ireland supporting people to create a life for themselves and they ensure that we support regional economies as well. It is important that we continuously look at the taxation measures that we have as a country so we can continue to remain competitive and to fight above our weight in terms of our ability to attract foreign direct investment. That is why it is important to make changes to the research and development tax credit also. Some Deputies took issue with the amendment to the research and development tax credit. In 2023, some 1,804 companies availed of it. They are companies that are providing real, quality jobs right throughout the length and breadth of Ireland. The 1,804 companies that availed of the research and development tax credit in 2023 paid €10 billion in corporation tax. The taxation measures we introduce have a direct consequence. When we remain competitive, it helps us increase our tax take. Because we have a competitive and strong economy and full employment, we have been in a position to respond to people who need help with the cost of living. We have been able to increase the fuel allowance, reduce VAT on gas and electricity, increase the temporary fuel excise, increase income tax and personal tax credits and reduce USC thresholds. We have been able to do all this investment because we have a strong and stable economy, full employment and are running budget surpluses. The contradictory remarks regarding the derelict property tax were a bit surprising. Some people were ultra critical of the councils for their inability to collect the tax in recent years. Deputy Gould criticised the Government for Cork County Council's inability to collect it over 20 years and criticised us for not handing it over to the Revenue quickly enough but also asked why we are taking it away from the local authorities. The reason for the delay in moving it from the local authorities to Revenue is that it is being done through negotiation with Revenue, with the Department of housing and with local government to ensure they will have a proper list compiled by the time it is handed over to Revenue. When a new tax is being introduced, you need to ensure it is fair and is consistently applied throughout the jurisdiction. We cannot have any differences in the tax charged in Westmeath, west Cork or Kerry. We need to ensure people take corrective actions to bring derelict properties into a habitable state. If this is to work properly, it should not be a revenue-generating exercise. It should be about bringing derelict properties back into habitable use. The Government has a strong record in supporting people to do this in recent years, with croí cónaithe, the vacant house grant, the SEAI grants and the living above the shop initiative grants. That has worked in some instances but, unfortunately, in other instances, it has not worked. That is why it is important this measure be transferred to Revenue and that will be done over the course of the next number of years. Deputy Conway-Walsh was critical of the Government and looked for greater efficiencies in provision of public services. This is an example of where we need to see greater efficiencies. We need to see new measures being implemented in a timely fashion so they can have an impact on the communities we represent. She talked about supporting public sector workers and I agree wholeheartedly they need to be supported. That is why it is great to see the wage negotiations taking place. A point raised a number of times related to the new personal investment account. Deputies were somewhat critical of a Government that is introducing an account that will help people become more financially resilient. We have €180 billion on demand deposit in Ireland. We are a nation of savers. The people who are saving are not making their money work well for themselves. We want to bring in an investment account that will support people in becoming more financially resilient, planning for the future and doing so in an easy, accessible way. By encouraging people to invest in the markets, we will also support job creation and people who want to create jobs - again, that is something that was criticised in a number of contributions. I thank the Deputies for contributing to the debate. I look forward to the opportunity to engage in more detail as the finance Bill goes through the various Stages in the Oireachtas.