Finance Bill 2022: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2022-11-29 ============================================================ Pat Casey (FF), Labour Panel I welcome the Minister to the House. Today’s Bill is further evidence that the number one priority of the Government is to protect all the people facing an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis caused by the continuing plague of populist politics, in particular the illegal invasion of Ukraine by the Putin regime. Older people trying to heat their homes, families trying to feed their children and make ends meet and businesses trying to keep their doors open and retain jobs do not need fantasy policies that have wrecked other economies, such as the UK's. These communities need targeted funding and tax measures are needed to ensure all homes remain warm, families can cherish their children and Irish businesses can face what will be a difficult winter given the rising costs of energy, food and supply chain goods. We are seeing how the cost-of-living supports are helping to ease the pressure on families, with more than 77,500 families in County Wicklow alone benefiting from them, including the first of three €200 energy credits. We are talking about child welfare benefits, living alone benefits and the fuel allowance, double payments in autumn and another double payment coming shortly. Senator Maria Byrne identified several other measures that have targeted the most vulnerable in society. Fianna Fáil welcomes and supports the Bill, which implements the taxation changes announced on budget day and introduces some necessary administrative and technical changes to the tax code. The Bill sets out legislative provisions to introduce the tax measures announced in budget 2023. This is a cost-of-living budget that underlines the Government's commitment to assist individual families and businesses in dealing with the challenges faced by rising prices. The Bill introduces a range of targeted tax changes and includes specific measures to support families and business and to address climate change. A specific policy announced in the budget was the TBESS. The Bill provides details of the scheme, which will be available to trading and professional businesses experiencing significant increases in energy costs. As the Minister mentioned, Revenue published guidance on the scheme and opened it for registration recently. Being in business, I understand the impact the cost of energy is having on the viability of businesses. As Senator Maria Byrne said, this is probably the biggest challenge faced by businesses today. While retail is a high-energy consuming sector, hospitality is equally a high-energy consuming sector and our industry will struggle over the winter period. There is a need to look at the cap under the energy support scheme. Some larger businesses will reach the cap rather quickly, and whether they can move to the other scheme needs to be considered. On income tax, the Bill gives effect to budget measures to increase the standard rate band by €3,200 and personal tax credits by €75, including personal credit, employee tax credit and earned income credit. Furthermore, the home carer tax credit will increase by €100. Landlords were mentioned earlier, so I will mention the rent tax credit. Section 12 introduces a €500 tax credit for renters, for which tax-paying tenants in particular properties are eligible in their own right. Senator Maria Byrne also mentioned the living city initiative, which is critical, and its extension for a further five years to 2027 must be welcomed. I refer to pre-letting expenses for landlords. Section 97 provides for the limited deduction against rental income for pre-letting expenses incurred in residential premises that have been vacant for more than 12 months. This will double the allocated expenditure limited for deductible pre-letting expenses for landlords on vacant properties from €5,000 to €10,000, and it will half the period for which the property must be vacant prior to letting. On the subject of landlords, I refer to Senator McDowell's contribution. I honestly believe we have got the balance wrong. Landlords are a critical and integral part of the housing market and are part of the solution to the housing crisis. The vilification of landlords over recent years is wrong. Many of us had hoped the budget would bring something positive from a landlord's point of view, but it did not deliver on that. We cannot blame landlords for exiting the market when we see what they are facing. As we heard, 5,600 have left the market this year. I am concerned about where some of these homes are going. Many of them are being placed on short-term letting platforms, about which I have had a major concern since I first sat in the Lower House in 2016. I was the first person to raise the issue of short-term lettings and their impact on the housing crisis. Fáilte Ireland published a report in the first quarter of 2022, and it identified 14,000 homes on short-term letting platforms. Believe me, that is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the number of homes on short-term letting platforms. I raised this issue with the then Minister of State, Eoghan Murphy, who said it was the responsibility of the then Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport because it was a tourism product, but he got no traction with the then Minister, Shane Ross. It was disappointing to read newspaper reports that the Minister for Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media has delayed legislation on short-term letting platforms by another five months. This is emergency legislation that is needed to get people back into the rental market. I agree we got the balance is wrong and that is why landlords are exiting the market. I will, therefore, not go on to praise the vacant home tax after making such a statement. There has been an extension to the VAT rate on electricity and changes to VAT on newspapers. A nice measure in the budget was the zero-VAT rate on automated external defibrillators. Many of us met with community groups across the country that are trying to raise the funds for these defibrillators on their own. That was a nice measure included in the budget. While on the subject of VAT, I cannot pass up the opportunity to mention my sector, hospitality. The VAT rate was not extended in the hospitality industry in respect of accommodation and food. I have raised the matter of decoupling these different services on several occasions. They are completely different products and they should be looked at differently. From a Wicklow point of view, I welcome the extension of the section 481 film tax credit and the measures relating to the knowledge development box. As for agri-tax relief, several key measures have been extended by three years to 2025, such as the young trained farmer stamp duty relief, the farm consolidation stamp duty relief and the farm restructuring relief. Facts matter. Policies and choices facing the Government must be based on facts. The Irish people deserve to know the facts. Our economic management through Covid, and now in the post-Covid world, is one of the greatest success stories in the world. Respected UN data prove time and again the massive success of the economy and the political management of our redistribution under progressive budgetary policies. A successful economy creates the tax yield that must be spent wisely and that supports society to ensure the values of our Republic are given real and practical purpose. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy McGrath, and the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, have consistently been practical politicians who avoid the showboating and negative populism of others in order to concentrate on doing the job that the Irish people wanted and elected them to do. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2022-11-29/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:20+00:00 Sitting date: 2022-11-29