Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I am sure Mr. Keegan's accountancy bodies include those which represent small accountants, people who will help others like me when they are in the European Parliament and small businesses. However, I am sure they also include precisely the practices Mr. Keegan said were dangerous. Many people would put it much more bluntly in respect of robust tax avoidance by saying some elements in the accountancy profession are up to their necks in assisting the wealthiest corporations in the State to legally fiddle every cent of tax they can keep out of the public purse. It is fundamentally an anti-social activity from start to finish.

Against a background where poor people, working people and those on middle and low incomes have been hammered for five years by austerity and in carrying the can for a crash in the financial markets system and having incredible private bondholders' debts put on their shoulders, Mr. Keegan comes in looking for more, which is astounding. If I am reading his submission correctly, he wants a continued limit to changes to fundamental tax policy issues, including rate, residency and base, and corporate residency tax rules not to be tampered with. He saw a High Court case the other day in which a billionaire walked away with €47 million because he could legally fiddle the system to go off and live in Portugal having been handled a goldmine by the State or political parties in the State when they gave him a licence everybody knew was the same as handing over a goldmine. How can Mr. Keegan come in here and justify this and more of it against what the people are going through?

I make a similar point on corporation tax. Accountants and the big people they service do not really have much to fear because they have a massive coalition of most right-wing parties in Dáil Éireann, virtually all of the media which are huge corporate entities and every other establishment entity such that they may not even raise the idea of an increase in corporate tax. I raise the issue of corporation tax, not for small people who need help and who, in many cases, are in distress. However, it should be upped for the big people against a background where the people are being called on to carry the can to save their system. I made the point when representatives of the business sector were here before the current delegation that it had been reported in the international financial press last year that the major corporations of Europe were sitting on €3 trillion in accumulated profits which they refused to invest, at a time when there was 50% youth unemployment in Spain and Greece and a significant problem here. We need more tax from these sectors, not less.

I endorse the points made by others about greater incentivisation of construction. There must be a different way of dealing with this issue. Mr. O'Connor wants to see a reduction of 5% in VAT on labour and professional services for property repairs, energy upgrades, retrofitting, maintenance works, etc. Retrofitting should have been massively promoted previously. The Government is now trying to install water meters in every house in the country with a view to hammering households again for another €400, €500 or €600 which they do not have. I first entered the Dáil in 1997 and one of the first issues I raised was the need for an established national infrastructure to be put in place by law that would introduce water saving devices of a significant character in every home and construction contract for housing estates. The same could be done in the case of heating system. I do not think Mr. O'Connor's 5% VAT rate would do this, but it is something to think about in a broader, global fashion because one might as well have been talking to the wall as talking to the crowd who were there in 1997. The present gang is more of the same.

Perhaps Mr. McCabe might give us the address of the supermarket that was selling the expensive wine very cheaply. I am only joking.