Simon Harris

I thank Deputy O'Callaghan. As he will be aware, the Central Bank is the competent authority when it comes to the issuing of prospectus approval. It has informed me that it continues to keep under review its compliance with the applicable international legal and regulatory frameworks in relation to its mandates and engagements. Furthermore, the Central Bank, as the financial regulator, is independ…

I thank the Deputy. I have been very clear in my view on this. Our clear advice is that even if domestic legislation were passed, it would not allow for the Central Bank to refuse a prospectus where the requirements of the EU prospectus regulation have been met, including the standards of completeness, consistency and comprehensibility. We have to respect EU law and the Central Bank has to abide b…

I agree with the Deputy's analysis of the atrocities happening in Palestine and that the actions of the Israeli Government are in breach of international law and despicable. There is a genocide happening in Palestine. The only area we disagree on, or are teasing through, concerns what is legally possible. I will look again at the independent legal advice of the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advise…

I welcome the opportunity to try to provide some clarity. For people at home who are watching in, let us be clear what the current Finance Bill is doing. It is giving primary legislative underpinning to the financial resolution; no more, no less. We in this House voted through a financial resolution to reduce the excise duty on diesel, petrol and green diesel. If there is a large gap between a fin…

Let us not worry people unnecessarily. Let me be clear. There is legislation going through the Oireachtas now that is giving legislative underpinning to the reduction we put in place which is to end on 31 July. That has to happen. It is required legally. That is what it is doing; no more, no less. There is another piece that it is important we say to people if we are concerned about them being wo…

It is.

It is.

The Deputy voted against cutting the excise, full stop.

I do not want to interrupt the united Opposition. To be clear, there is only one Deputy currently in the Chamber who voted against the financial resolution to cut the excise duty in the first place. His name is Deputy Pearse Doherty. Let the Dáil record show that Deputies Cian O'Callaghan and Neville, the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach and I all voted to reduce the excise duty but Deputy Doherty decided …

The Deputy should not worry. The Government has-----

The Government has an ability to respond. The Deputy knows that.

What I am announcing is that the days of the Deputy coming into this House and trying to shout people down and bully them are over. I am speaking and the Deputy stood up and interrupted me. The situation is very clear. Let the people at home who are worried about their bills know that there is plenty of time before this Dáil goes into recess to make informed, evidence-based decisions. This Governm…

I thank the Deputy for the question. The Programme for Government: Securing Ireland's Future contains specific undertakings with regard to personal income tax. It commits to implementing progressive changes in taxation if the economy remains strong, including indexing credits and bands to prevent an increase in the real burden of income tax while, in the event of an economic downturn or unexpected…

I appreciate some of the Deputy's comments about the challenges that exist. We live in a country where one third of people pay no income tax or USC. When we talk about progressivity we have to acknowledge that fact. We can argue about whether it is a good or bad thing, but approximately one third do not pay any income tax or USC. That has to be factored into any comments on progressivity. Second,…

Another Thursday, another emergency budget. We cannot keep having calls for emergency budgets and mini-budgets every week. Come on. We just cannot. Will the Deputy please read the analysis from the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council and the Central Bank? To look for another budget every week-----

The Deputy is doing it again. The budget will be in around 100 days' time. We need to get into an annual budget cycle. We should have a good, decent, robust debate about what the best composition of that is. I look forward to that very much, but we have to stop with this idea of an emergency budget. We have to run the country in a sustainable way. We should not look at how we assist people purely…

The Deputy is dismissing it.

Apologies.

The good thing about this country is that we have elections. We had two recently and the Deputy went to Galway extensively - he was there a lot - and told people to send Fine Gael a message, back the Sinn Féin emergency budget and vote for the Sinn Féin candidate and Sinn Féin lost the election, badly. In Dublin Central, the Sinn Féin leader's constituency, it lost the election badly, because peop…

I thank Deputy Neville for the question. The programme for Government contains commitments on personal income tax. We have been clear that if we saw a significant economic deterioration, we would not be able to proceed with personal income tax measures, but I am pleased to inform the House and the Deputy that we will be in a position this year to deliver a personal income tax package. It is more i…

I thank Deputy Neville very much. To be helpful, we will see the tax strategy group papers published in the coming weeks and there will be the annual income tax paper from that group, which will set out information on the adjustment of income tax standard bands, including the estimated cost to the Exchequer. These publications are all based on the Revenue ready reckoner and are useful for all of u…

I agree with Deputy Neville. Sometimes, we have debates in this House on taxation measures versus spending measures but it is not an either-or situation. We can help people through the income tax system and we should, for all the reasons the Deputy outlined, and will do that. There are also other issues the public want to see us make progress on with respect to the structural costs they face in th…

I genuinely look forward to any discussion of how we do better and do more on this area, which is really important and of growing concern. It is important to note responsibility for various aspects of legislation and policy on combating money laundering, countering the financing of terrorism and the financing of weapons of mass destruction falls across a number of Departments, including mine as we…

It is a fair point. We have published an action plan with the 30 actions and the reporting structure every six months as well. We have to ensure that is adequately resourced. There are associated resource implications that arise from changes to Ireland's anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism, AML-CFT, regime due to the sixth anti–money laundering directive and also increa…

It is a fair point to which I will seek a decent answer for the Deputy. I will come back to him in writing on it. I am concerned about the issues relating to crypto and some of the issues the Deputy has highlighted. I will get specialist advice as to our level of satisfaction that the actions are robustly dealing with them, or not. I am also concerned about other recent developments we have seen …