Having lost votes to the PDs in 1987, Fine Gael is not about to repeat the mistake, writes Marc Coleman, Economics Editor
The best way of stopping someone from stealing your clothes is to avoid taking them off too often.
It's a lesson that Fine Gael has learned the hard way, losing much of its traditional vote to the Progressive Democrats in the 1987 election, after coalition with Labour, and failing to regain it in the 1997 poll for much the same reason.
Since then cohorts of newer and younger voters have joined the conscious voting public.
As well as having growing families and long commutes, these new voters also labour under large stamp duty bills.
With one of the youngest parliamentary parties in the Dáil, Enda Kenny yesterday tried to gain new friends and, just possibly, win back some old ones.
According to Fine Gael, two aspects of Government policy - the individualisation of tax bands and the inertia regarding stamp duty reform - provide an opportunity for Fine Gael to retrieve some of that clothing from the Government.
Speaking from the PD heartland of Limerick, Kenny promised to increase tax credits for people working in the home and to raise the standard rate band for 5,000 families.
Most of his speech, however, was devoted to the issue of stamp duty. A suggestion made last September by Michael McDowell that stamp duty should be reformed was followed soon after by a budget in which no change occurred.
Although increased by the rainbow coalition, stamp duty only began to affect ordinary house buyers during the term of the present Government. On this issue, and as far as Fine Gael is concerned, the administration is wearing its birthday suit.
Making a strong pitch to "young families", Kenny promises to abolish stamp duty for first-time buyers of any property under €450,000 if elected to government.
He will also reduce the number of stamp duty rates from seven (0, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.5 and 9 per cent) to just three (0, 5 and 9 per cent).
Furthermore, to make the tax equitable, higher rates will be payable not on the full house price as at present, but only on the portion that exceeds the relevant tax threshold.
Moreover, Kenny proposes to increase those thresholds. Currently an average house price of €350,000 incurs a stamp duty rate of 6 per cent and a total bill of €21,000. Under Fine Gael plans, no stamp duty would be paid on the first €100,000 of any house.
A 5 per cent rate would apply on the next €350,000 and 9 per cent would be payable on any portion of a house price above €450,000.
For an average house as that described, the stamp duty bill would fall to €12,500.
As shown in a table accompanying Kenny's speech, house buyers across all price ranges above €350,000 for first-time buyers and above €200,000 for second-hand buyers would gain anything from between €3,000 and €40,500 in stamp duty reductions.
The shift from taxing the entire house price at the highest rate to a more graduated approach constitutes a rationalisation of stamp duty that most tax experts would say is long overdue.
But in relation to the reduction in rates and the increase in thresholds, there is a snag: while beneficial as long as the market remains in its current state of low growth, a resumption in strong house price growth could quickly erode the advantages of the reform. Unless, that is, Fine Gael commits unambiguously to indexing these thresholds to the rate of house price inflation.
The same observation applies to the commitment to raise thresholds for the standard rate of income tax.
On a once-off basis, there will certainly be a benefit, but that benefit will not endure if wage growth continues to push average wage levels back over that standard.
In recent months both Fine Gael and Labour have moved from a position of strong commitment to tax indexation, to positions that are far more non-committal.
Tax-cut commitments without commitments on thresholds may not - as Brian Cowen suggested - be meaningless.
But they are certainly far less valuable than when there are strong supporting commitments on indexation.
Fine Gael calculates that its tax strategy will cost some €650 million, modest enough compared to the €1 billion cost of Labour's plans and the significantly higher figure for the PDs.
But although lower in magnitude, Fine Gael's tax giveaway is at least more forensically targeted at a sector of society that is clearly in need - suffering as it does from high childcare costs.
With both the Labour Party and the Greens having committed to some reform of stamp duty, Fine Gael proposals are unlikely to be incompatible with those of its prospective partners.
In fact, it faces only one significant problem: it has shown its clothes off a fortnight before the Fianna Fáil ardfheis, and the soldiers of destiny is a political grouping not unknown for kleptomania in matters of clothing.