Target tax breaks to wealthy, says Burton

THE GOVERNMENT must urgently address the amount of revenue it is losing through tax breaks and allowances to the wealthy, Labour’s finance spokeswoman Joan Bruton urged yesterday.

Speaking as the annual report of the comptroller and auditor general which revealed the county’s richest 400 people received over €70 million in tax breaks last year, Ms Burton challenged the Government to account for the tax breaks.

“In a climate in which many are questioning the notion of pay rises through benchmarking, we are entitled to demand that this Government shows what value for money is involved in these extraordinarily generous tax breaks.

“Today’s report has to be addressed in the context of the Government seeking value for money from the benchmarking process,” she said.

According to yesterday’s report there are a total of 91 tax allowances and reliefs currently available. However, only the cost to the taxpayer of 48 are known to the Department of Finance.

The value of 10 tax allowances can only be guessed by the department while 33 are completely uncosted including controversial tax breaks available on stallion stud fees.

However, dismissing the issue in his Dáil question time Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy refused to respond to Ms Burton’s concerns saying they were not relevant to the debate.

Meanwhile, Fine Gael education spokeswoman Olwyn Enright attacked the Government’s indemnity deal with the religious orders saying the negotiations had been clearly botched.

“It is clear from the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report the Government failed utterly to adopt a robust and informed stance in the negotiations,” she said.

“The conducting of these negotiations in total secrecy, the lack of contemporaneous notes, the approval of the Government for the deal in January 2002 based on an oral report and the drafting of a retrospective memorandum all add up to a damning indictment,” Ms Enright said.

Green Party finance spokesman Dan Boyle was amazed at the amount of potential liability uncovered by yesterday’s report saying the taxpayer would be saddled with the cost.

“The Department of Education and Science left the taxpayer with a huge potential liability, upwards of €1 billion. This massive figure is more than twice what the department had estimated, an estimate which they had already doubled in a series of readjustments of the original potential financial risk,” he said.

Mr Boyle said yesterday’s report raised serious issues which he as lead questioner would raise at Thursday’s Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee which is to hear from Department of Education officials.