Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

That is just a part of it. I represent the radical wing of the party that wants a not-for-profit economy. I am very much in favour of the concept and I fully recognise the importance of the work done by the not-for-profit sector. Like everyone else, however, I am surprised by the size of the sector. The latter is a positive and if the sector is that big, if it works, if it creates employment, if it does good and if it solves problems, then perhaps consideration should be given to running the entire economy on a not-for-profit basis. We might be in a far better place than we are at present if the economy was run in that way. In circumstances where we are in dire need of employment and investment, it would be difficult to be opposed to or critical of anything that would increase investment and create employment in a sector such as that in which our guests are involved. I am, therefore, hugely sympathetic to what our guests are trying to do.

I must also consider the other side of the matter, however. I refer to the fact that in order to develop their sector, our guests are proposing that we should incentivise people who, in some cases, are tax exiles and who possess obscene amounts of wealth which they should not have and on which they pay very little tax. It is being suggested that we should reward or incentivise those to whom I refer in order to obtain money from them which they should be investing in our economy in any event. It was stated that we should "drag it out of them". I would be fully in favour of dragging this money out of them. However, it seems that what our guests are proposing is not that it should be dragged out of them but rather that we should beg them for it and reward them for giving it. If we were to do the latter, it would have the potential to really grate on the nerves of people who are pretty sickened by the gross inequalities of wealth. They are very sickened by the idea of enormously wealthy tax exiles being granted that status in the first instance. I suspect they would be quite angry that those individuals should somehow benefit from doing something which most citizens believe they should be doing through the tax system in any event. How do our guests reconcile this problem?

I am not the only person who is of the view that this is a problem. I will not mention any names but we all know the identities of some of those to whom I refer. There is genuine fury about super-wealthy tax exiles and tax refugees who pay so little tax. The same could be said in respect of corporations. People's fury could be intensified even further if they read our guests' report. While it is not possible to generalise about all of those involved, the report seems to indicate that we have - or damn near have - the meanest and greediest super-rich individuals and corporations in the western world. They are certainly meaner and greedier than their counterparts in comparable countries in Europe and in the United States. That is pretty shocking, particularly when one considers that they get such a good deal on their tax. How would our guests respond to what I believe is a real problem in this regard?