FG don’t know own economic policies
Issued : Friday 4 February, 2011
Cllr. Martin Coughlan has come out strongly against FG’s comments on Labour’s site valuation tax proposal today made in a statement from Fine Gael’s spokesperson for Communications, Energy & Natural Resources, Leo Varadkar TD.
Cllr. Coughlan was surprised by the statement issued by Leo Varadkar today, attacking Labour for proposing a policy that is the same as Fine Gael’s.
In their pre-budget statement last December, Fine Gael proposed a site valuation tax to yield €250m by 2014. Labour has included a similar amount in our tax proposals, and this is less than half of the amount targeted by Fianna Fail in their Four-Year plan.
Cllr. Coughlan stated that the Labour Party have been honest and up-front with people in saying that there is no database of property available in the State, which would allow for such a tax to be accurately designed at present, so Labour have committed to producing a Green Paper that looks at all the issues before implementation.
Because of the problems involved in designing the tax, Labour have also made it clear that no such tax could be brought in before 2014.
Labour candidate for Cork North West, Cllr. Martin Coughlan, said:
“The reality is that we need to raise this money to keep down taxes on jobs. Labour has been clear in our commitment that no-one earning less than €100,000 per annum should have to pay more income tax.
This is another example of Fine Gael being confused about their own policies. The other day they were forced to admit their ratio of cuts to taxes would need to change to include greater amounts of taxes.
That means FG’s promise to preserve or implement low-taxes is already a fantasy, and they either are misleading the electorate intentionally or due to economic illiteracy.”
Cllr 
