Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

What will happen at 11 p.m. is that those amendments tabled by the Minister and not discussed will be put to the House. None of the other amendments will be considered and the House will not have had the opportunity to discuss, hear the arguments for and tease out the detail of any of the amendments presented by the Minister. Those amendments will be agreed on the basis of the voting pattern in the House.

This business, as other speakers have described it, reminds me of the sham fight, which takes place year in, year out. I have a number of portfolio responsibilities and would very much like to be able to give more time to any of them. I have seen the work of other colleagues on the Committee on Finance and the Public Service, who put in a significant amount of work and time. I try to marry my various responsibilities with the finance portfolio and it is extremely difficult to do so. The Minister is proposing to extend various tax reliefs, but even with all the resources of the Department of Finance at his disposal, he cannot tell us the actual effect on the Exchequer. There is no cost benefit analysis and no indication of the real cost for the Exchequer. These are reliefs that are offered to particular sectoral interests and there is no way of knowing what effect any of these will have in terms of the broad range of interests in society.

One of the first responsibilities of the introduction, let alone the perpetuation and extension, of these reliefs is to properly appraise their effect but we will have none of that. I believe the Minister agrees with the points we are making. If he were on the Opposition benches, I do not think he would take any other view than that which we are expressing.

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