I am glad we have had a figure from the Minister for the cost of this amendment. The figure he gave was £16 million for exempting people with less than £4,500 taxable income. Although I know Deputy Gregory's intention was to devise an amendment specifically for the low paid, it happens that this amendment, which is based on a figure of £4,500, is helping people who have above-average incomes. There is a total of 808,000 people in the income tax net of whom 428,500 or 53 per cent, more than half, have incomes of less than £4,500. I believe on this issue there is very broad agreement in the House that we should make an amendment to help the lower paid but I believe the amendment in relation to £4,500 is going further than helping the lower paid. It would help more than half the eligible taxpayers in the country.
I would like to mention two alternative possible levels of taxable income which could be used for the purpose. If you were to say that people with a taxable income of under £2,000 were to benefit solely from the concession, then you would be talking about 21 per cent of the total taxpayers in the country, that is the lowest paid people in the country. That obviously would not cost £16 million. It would cost in the region of £6 million. You would be talking about an amendment which was more directly helping the lower paid rather than the majority of taxpayers and it would also cost significantly less. If you were less generous and took only those who had taxable incomes of £1,000 or less you would be helping only 10 per cent of the total taxpayers. Your cost would then be around £3 million, which is a very small sum to pay for establishing the principle that you want to help the low paid people in respect of their rent.
I feel in this discussion we should try to find a consensus across the House between the Minister and the other Members of the House on a figure somewhere between £1,000 of taxable income and £4,500 taxable income which would accept the principle of helping the low paid in respect of their rent and would also be fiscally responsible. If you were to take the lowest figure, of £3 million, you would not be talking about an amendment which would cost a very substantial sum. If that amendment costing £3 million were accepted it would not cost anything this year. The revenue would be next year so the Government would not be in a position where their current budget deficit would be affected. They would be in the position of having to find in the overall budget for next year £3 million to help low paid people in respect of their rent. The House should try to reach a consensus on this.
My party are very anxious to go as far as we can along the road of finding consensus in the House on this point between the Minister and the other Members of the House. I say that very deliberately because the Government should be wary of adopting the attitude that no amendment whatever proposed by anybody except the Minister for Finance can be accepted. If that is their attitude they are in effect saying that this debate is a complete waste of time and we should not be discussing the Finance Bill at all because no matter what anyone says the Minister will not change a single line of the Bill. I am sure the Minister and his colleagues fought very hard to become Members of the House and they would not wish a situation to be created where the debates of the House meant nothing as they would if the Minister persisted in the attitude he seems to have adopted that no change, no matter how modest, no matter how responsible, in respect of anything in the Finance Bill can be contemplated. I am not certain that is the Minister's attitude. It certainly should not be his attitude.
The Minister may take the view that on any amendments to the Finance Bill, no matter how modest they are, once there is a cost issue involved, he has to dissolve the Dáil and plunge the country into an election that night. This is constitutional nonsense. The House has a responsibility to fulfil to amend the Finance Bill, as its majority sees fit, in a responsible fashion. We must ensure that the Finance Bill is passed before any election takes place. If the Government, having considered all the amendments put forward in the debate, decide that the changes to be made are too wide-ranging for them to accept after the Finance Bill has been passed, they can then have an election if they decide that is what they need. As I said on other occasions outside the House, for the Government to say, as they seem to be saying, that they will not accept any amendment, no matter how small, to the Finance Bill, is negativing the value of this debate and if they go on to say that if such an amendment is made they will dissolve the Dáil overnight, then it is they and not the House who will be plunging the country into financial chaos. They are under no obligation to dissolve there and then. They are perfectly free to pass the Finance Bill, as amended by the House, as it is the job of the House to do and only having done so, if they then decide that they cannot work with the Finance Bill, that there is not enough money, they can have an election at that stage. If they decide in midstream, during the course of the discussion on the Finance Bill, to have an election and thereby jeopardise the possibility of the Finance Bill being passed before 25 July, when the resolutions passed on budget night in regard to this matter run out, it will be the Government, not Members of this House who are doing their duty in proposing amendments to the Bill, who will be plunging the country into financial chaos. The Taoiseach needs to think a little more deeply about the issue before he rushes in a panic on to television and the radio to make statements about the so-called irresponsibility of the Opposition when in fact by making those statements he is contemplating this highly irresponsible deed.
I further remind the House that there are many precedents in other countries in relation to Governments who have failed to get support on every item in a Finance Bill. One example is the Callaghan Government in Britain who accepted certain amendments in relation to proposals in their Finance Bill. They had an election after they passed the Finance Bill. They decided they could not live with those amendments. They said they accepted them for the time being and they would try to get a new House that would support their line. That is the normal constitutional practice to adopt in a situation like that. The Government, as I already said, would be acting irresponsibly if they adopted any other attitude. I hope they will not do so. That is why my party have been trying to find a consensus in the House. None of us gains anything by engaging in exaggerated statements as seems to be the approach on the other side of the House.
We should debate this issue of rent relief for tenants as an issue. It deserves to be debated in an unemotional way when we are all trying to reach consensus on the subject. I am sure that Deputy Gregory will feel, like my party, on the basis of further information, that when his amendment will benefit 53 per cent of the total taxpayers it is not only going to the lower paid but is going to others as well and that perhaps another figure could be chosen.
There is another point made by the Minister, that there would be problems in administering the relief. He suggested that there would have to be some form of marginal relief for taxpayers who have — let us take a figure of £2,000 — a taxable income of £2,100 who do not get any income relief as against those who have a taxable income of £1,900 and who get tax relief. Those people would then be worse off. I am sure the Revenue Commissioners have plenty of experience in solving matters like this. If the Minister can be persuaded to accept the principle of this amendment and if he does not devise a way to get over this between now and Report Stage, we can devise a suitable system of marginal relief which would get over that problem.
The other technical difficulty the Minister mentioned in relation to the amendment is that you would not know if someone has a taxable income until the end of the year in relation to the £2,500 or the £4,000. His income might go up and he might not be claiming the allowance. He said that clearly he could not be allowed a relief on a week by week basis. He would have to wait until the end of the year when a refund would be given if his income had gone up to qualify him for the relief. I do not believe that is a problem. I do not see any reason why one cannot wait until the end of the year to get such relief. It would be a simpler transaction in that there would be one refund to be made, one cheque to be sent. By waiting to the end of the year also rather than doing it on a week to week basis it would be easier to make the calculations regarding whatever marginal relief is introduced because that would be just one calculation done at the end of the year rather than an on-going running calculation having to be made week by week by the employer during the year. That is the way we should seek to frame the practice in regard to the matter.
The Minister may say that there would be difficulties in operating this, that introducing such a new concept into the revenue law would cause a big problem for us because it is such a new concept. I do not accept that either because no relief will actually fall to be given to people in respect of their income until next year. All they are being asked to do this year is to keep the receipts and it is only next year that the relief will come into operation. The Revenue Commissioners will have up to nine months during which they can make whatever calculations or arrangements are necessary from an administrative point of view. The Minister may also claim that if we make the amendment at this stage there could be some unforeseen problem that would come up to keep the Revenue Commissioners working assiduously on the subject over the next couple of months. The Minister may say that next September or October they may come up with a problem and say that they should have mentioned that to the Minister when the legislation was going through the House. They may say that they cannot find a way of solving it and, consequently, could not operate the scheme. That is not so either. I should like to draw the attention of the House to the fact that subsection (5) states that the Revenue Commissioners are given power to make regulations, for the purpose of giving effect to that section, with respect to the allowance granted by this section, or to any matter ancillary or incidental thereto, or, in particular and without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing, to provide for certain things.
One can see from the first few words I have read that the Revenue Commissioners have power to make regulations to govern any unforeseen problem that might arise from the fact that this is an amendment introduced to the Finance Bill rather than something that was in the Bill from the outset. That is an inevitable danger in amending any Bill. One cannot think of everything no more than any Minister for Finance cannot think of everything when introducing a Bill. Rarely has a Minister for Finance introduced a new tax or an new tax concession without having to come back to the House the following year to amend. That is not a great problem. In this instance we have a solution built into the section in that subsection (5) provides the Revenue with the power to make further regulations to iron out any detailed problems that might arise in the administration of the section or the amendment to it that may be made in the House.
The £4,500 figure consisting as it does of more than half of all taxpayers and costing £16 million is going further than we can afford at this juncture and we should, either by agreement here substitute another figure, as we can do orally, for the figure of £4,500 in Deputy Gregory's amendment or, failing that, come back on Report Stage with another figure which is more reasonable from the Revenue and low income point of view. I appeal to the Minister and the Government in their own interest as much as in the interests of the House to adopt an open attitude towards amendments of this kind which are put forward with a view to solving a real problem and not to say that because they are the Government they will not accept any change whatever. That is not a politically judicious attitude for the Government to adopt. It is an attitude which shows a lack of appreciation for the prerogative of the House which is even more serious.