Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

My observation from working in the social sector in the United Kingdom is that part of the problem for the sector here is that it has not professionalised. In London, by contrast, in the late 1990s and the 2000s, there was a move towards professionalisation and an acceptance, for instance, that it is necessary to pay decent wages to attract the right people, people who will bring in 20, 100 or even 150 times their wage in funding. By the international standards I have seen, the sector here is still very amateur. It is too small, there is not sufficient scale, and we see a hang-up on wages. It is fine to claim that we cannot pay comparable wages in this country, but one must then accept there will be a deficit in terms of professionalism.

The delegates have set out a funding mechanism whereby contributors would pay €5 million in the first year and €1 million per year for a further ten years, giving a total of €15 million. For the seriously wealthy people who are avoiding paying a very substantial amount of tax in this country by staying outside it, even though their families might live here all the time, such a proposal might well look like a great deal. They are essentially buying more time in Ireland for a sum which to them would be relatively insignificant. For others lower down the wealth scale, however, it is a more expensive proposition because it is a set amount. Did the forum consider whether rather than having an absolute contribution, it might be more helpful to look at a percentage of tax avoided? In the case, for example, of a person who currently avoids paying €100 million in tax, the offer might be that he or she would be eligible for the additional days if that figure were reduced to 85%. That type of mechanism would potentially bring in a lot more people and in the case of those earning the megabucks, and avoiding megabucks in tax payment, there would be scope to recoup a lot more than €15 million.