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

All the information on HSBC which came from Swiss leaks showed all the tax avoidance that was going on. This was leaked to several European Governments before it was leaked to the media and absolutely nothing happened. As a result of the inaction of governments across Europe, it was leaked to a host of international media organisations which then published the information. That is one example of why we need public country-by-country reporting.

To put it bluntly, governments cannot be trusted to make known to the public important information that is in the public interest. I am reading quite a good paper on this very issue, which points out - the Minister of State can confirm whether this is true - that the Irish tax authority has 201 members of staff in its office for large taxpayers, but this covers more than 12,000 companies of domestic and foreign origin, among which are 1,000 foreign transnational enterprises. The paper goes on to point out that even with the best systems and procedures, it seems unlikely that 201 staff members would be able to scrutinise effectively and ensure the accuracy of these companies' tax returns. That seems like a pretty good point.

By having them publish the information, we would save ourselves a lot of work and effort. It would allow the public and all sorts of people to scrutinise these accounts and establish whether multinationals are playing by the rules. It would establish whether Government policy is working. It might be useful to know what subsidies of various types are going to companies. The public is entitled to know all this information, particularly given the sheer size and significance of multinational companies, many of whom have bigger economies than large countries.

These companies are like Colossi, dominating the world economic system, and we know very little about what they are really up to. They have extraordinary influence on what happens in the world, to the point that, effectively, they can blackmail governments. They have pretty much succeeded in doing that here because the Government is afraid of them.