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

On risk, there are risks that people can see and understand and can say they see the point of them. For example, they could take a risk in investing in developing renewable energy because we need energy and if they invest in that area, they might develop resources that would be useful for the State and create a few jobs. That is a risk I can get. Let us take the risk of investing, for example, in afforestation because that will lead to jobs and the development of an energy source, social housing and so on. However, this measure facilitates risk in an opaque area. We do not know what is being lent to whom or for what purpose but it seems primarily to be about speculation on prices going up and down and the value of assets going up and down. I do not see how that can be anything other than a dangerous activity.

The FTT is a revenue-raising measure but one of the key reasons it was first proposed was to regulate the financial services sector, which many people in Europe rightly said was out of control and needed to be cooled down by imposing a tax on it. We are out of step with much of Europe in saying this industry should not be regulated too much and an FTT should not be imposed because it could be bad for the Irish Financial Services Centre, even though there is a good reason Europe is pushing both of these measures, which is this industry is potentially dangerous and destabilising and measures need to be taken to control and regulate it. We seem to be out of step in saying we kind of like the idea but we do not want too much regulation because it might hurt us.