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

I have made my point. It seems obvious to me that all of those things are true but it still seems to be heavily concentrated in Ireland and other places.

Fair tax competition was mentioned as against unfair tax competition but I find it difficult to accept the distinction between the two. Let me spell it out. Competition in the area of tax is not competition on making things that are useful. It is not useful competition in real economic activity and it is not competition in producing real wealth or value but it is competition in poaching profits or investment. I do not see how one can talk about a fair regime in what is a predatory practice by definition. Surely once there is competition in this area inevitably people will try to get around the rules, bend them which is followed by a race to the bottom in terms of the contribution that corporations are likely to pay. Historically, the pattern has spanned the period from the 1970s to now. Is it not self-evident that the tax contribution by corporations and companies has fallen steadily since the 1970s leading to the sort of incredible situations that we have now with huge profits being avoided or evaded? Is that not the result of bringing competition to bear in the area of taxation? Is it not futile to regulate tax competition rather than stamp it out?