Professor Frank Barry:

The message coming out of Ireland is that we have a simple code compared with many of our competitors. In the Netherlands, every activity that one can imagine has its own code.

The famous statistic we used to examine was the ratio of lawyers to the population and whether it was beneficial or detrimental to growth. We have a more basic code than a lot of our competitor countries. Senator Barrett seems to be arguing for a flat tax across the economy and maybe he supports that. A few countries, such as Estonia, have introduced flat taxes. I do not really know how well they have worked but that would be a huge change. I suspect that Senator Barrett might be fighting for it single-handedly in the Oireachtas.