Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Section 9 refers to the special assignee relief programme, SARP. We rehearsed this debate on Second Stage. I am unconvinced that the scheme works, is desirable or value for money. The Revenue Commissioners have told us that 302 people availed of SARP in 2014 and it cost the Exchequer €5.9 million. That is an important figure when we put it in the context of the strife and difficulties we are going through now. Let us remember that to avail of SARP one must first be a very high earner and one only gets relief on the portion of income above €150,000. The Garda have a starting pay of €23,000 and it is the same for teachers who are paid for supervision and all of the rest. Under SARP nearly €6 million was provided to 302 people. It means €20,000 in tax benefit was given to each person but that amounts to almost the annual salary of a Garda starting in the service.

Let us look at the number of jobs created by the scheme. In the Department's report of 2014 it states that of the 12 people who availed of the scheme only five jobs were created and six retained. It continued:

There is also a lack of measurable evidence that the scheme has resulted in an increase in Foreign Direct Investment or the rollout of new projects ... under the current scheme it is not mandatory to create jobs in order to qualify for SARP.

During the review, a number of stakeholders also expressed the view that the few who had availed of SARP to date had ‘fallen into’ the relief rather than it being a deciding factor in their decision to relocate.

As the Minister mentioned yesterday, we talked about dead weighting schemes and that is what has been referred to here. These key individuals would have come here anyway and they did not need this tax incentive to help them relocate here. At a time when there is a reduction in available fiscal space for us next year, and pressures in different areas, we should seriously question the continuation of the scheme. Let us remember that the scheme is supposed to be gone and I made this point yesterday. I do not know the last time the Government introduced a tax scheme with a deadline where it accepted the deadline, let it go and closed the scheme down at that point. The scheme was rolled over into 2016 and now it has been rolled over to 2020 yet there is no direct evidence, but increasing annual costs, that additional jobs have been created. Serious questions must be asked about why we give the relief to high earners in the first place.