hi oilean. yes i did some calculations on the effect of that change at the time and posted a message here on this site. among the things i found was that you need a return of over 1.2 (upto 1.25) times the rate of inflation in order for the value of your investment to stand still in real terms. when mcgreevy introduced this measure, inflation was running at 4% which meant that for many reasonable investment periods and rates of return, this change was equivalent to bumping up the cgt rate to 40% under the old rules. this was a sneaky trick alright - if he had just raised the rate to 40% there would have been uproar. he effectively did that but it seems to have escaped nearly everyone's attention.
There was some discussion about the abolition of CGT indexation relief post December 31st 2002 at the time it was introduced but not a huge amount if I recall correctly.