Professor Terrence McDonough:

The artistic reference is interesting. In The Irish Timesthis morning, Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance Minister, makes reference to Beckett's play, "Happy Days". If the question is posed on whether we wanted a derelict dockland or an Irish financial services centre one can certainly see the argument for establishing the IFSC.

The point I keep coming back to is that all of these things have their impact and work their impact out in a dynamic way over the course of time and that things which are initially positive in their impact can ultimately contribute to very serious negative outcomes as that dynamic works itself out.

The establishment of economic activity in the Dublin docklands was a very good thing. The total lack of regulation of that economic activity, especially in light of its financial character, turned out to be not such a good thing and the impact of that on the remaining portion of that neighbourhood in the docklands now is substantially negative.

As regards the tax question, I think that we can do with higher tax rates on upper income levels; we can do with taxing wealth in addition to income; we can do with a policy which raises the incomes of people at the lower end of the economic scale and which then provides an opportunity to increase taxation there as well.

I am not a supporter of this process whereby more and more people are taken completely out of the tax net and are then no longer seen as contributing to the collective services which the society should be providing, primarily for people at the lower end of the scale. I think we need to collect more taxes in general.