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

I am trying to get my head fully around this. On foot of lobbying by foreign direct investment companies, which we can understand to be large multinationals which already make extraordinary profits and pay very low levels of effective tax, we will concede yet another tax break. This follows the SARP tax break.

There was also a tax break for these executives to send their children to private schools, and now we have another one. I struggle to find a justification for this because it seems wide open to abuse. It seems that yet again we are subsidising these corporations. How does the Minister respond to this? I do not see why these companies should not just foot the bill and the costs, and make their own arrangements in some way with their employees. The idea that we are giving a tax break to them seems like a hidden subsidy to the companies themselves or to their better paid personnel.

Would the Minister think of capping the amount that could be charged to travel and subsistence expenses so that we do not give people a tax break to use the most expensive forms of transport and the most luxurious and plush hotels and milk the expenses in this way? There is no guard against this in the measure the Minister is introducing.