Colm McCarthy's call for a benefit-in-kind tax on car parking spaces may have received attention from Morning Ireland and certain newspapers, but The Margin's contact with elephantine memory can recall just such a proposal in a budget just five or six years ago.

In fact it was introduced in the 1992 budget but quickly withdrawn. ail opposed it at the time, while its their PD partners had supported it. Only The very cynical thought that Finance mandarins killed the idea when they realised it could have an impact on their own very lucrative spaces at Fitzwilliam Lane. Whether the idea to allow bus passes in the tax system will receive the same amount of attention is open to dispute.