The budget demonstrated the government's lack of knowledge in the area of boats and yachts, as well as blatantly discriminating against small boat owners. The yearly license fee for boats was always discriminatory, and one would have hoped that this would be remedied once and for all. Unfortunately, this did not happen.

The new budget measures saw an increase in fees for so-called yachts. The maximum horsepower mentioned is 150hp for any sort of "yacht". This is ridiculous for the following reasons:

Technically, a yacht is classified as a recreational vessel greater than 30 feet (or 10 metres).

They go up to around 100 feet. Vessels between 100 feet and 200 feet are called mega yachts. Any vessel over 200 feet is called a super yacht, and vessels over 300 feet are called ships, and are usually commercial vessels.

Vessels under 30 feet long are simply called boats, and are usually not very expensive, especially when compared to yachts over 30 feet long. Furthermore, boats of less than 30 feet are usually powered by engines not very much over the 150hp mark, depending on their size and type; they can be powerboats, cruisers, sailing boats or fishing boats. I wish to see a yacht bigger than 30 feet powered an engine close to 150hp, unless it's a sailing boat.

The discriminatory factor is that a typical small boat owner having, say, a 20-foot boat powered by a 150hp engine, has to pay the maximum license of €200. The owner of, say, a 150-foot yacht (which is typically powered by around 2000hp, and are basically floating houses), pays the same maximum license of €200. Does anyone in his right mind think that this is fair? I don't think so. If this is not discrimination, what is then?

And what about the so-called green budget that our government presented to us? Do they know the difference in emissions of a boat powered by a 150hp engine compared to that of a yacht with 2000hp? Even a grade one student would understand the difference.

I kindly ask the government to review these licenses and balance them out, increasing the range of the "yacht" sizes and their license fees accordingly. I think that the government can actually make much more money out of the larger yacht owners, and not make the small boat owners pay for the former's (very) expensive luxuries.