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

I am making a more general point, although I also have a specific point on this amendment. We will move through this and some of the other amendments that cover some of the same ground. There is no doubt that we need to encourage innovation. We should support innovators. I am not convinced that giving tax breaks to companies is the best way to support innovation, which is why I opposed the Bill in the first instance. Every cent lost in tax revenue is money that could potentially be going to the universities.

We have a choice. Do we go the private route in supporting and encouraging innovation or do we take the public route? We could even provide grants to small producers, which might be more helpful to them. The biggest problem for small operations or individuals trying to develop something new is not tax but having a bit of money to do the research and development and develop an idea rather than a tax break on the revenue they generate once they have it up and running. My fear is that this is not the best way to achieve the Bill's stated objective. The unintended - possibly intended - consequence is providing another mechanism for profitable corporations to pay less tax. Obviously, there is a context for that because big questions arise regarding the extent of the tax being paid by corporations. Even people who might disagree with my perspective on these would accept that there are questions to be answered following the Apple case. Just looking at the revenue figures of corporation tax take as against pre-tax profits, dividing one by the other does not give 12.5%, but about 6%. That is the effective rate of tax being paid at the moment. As we know, for some companies it is considerably less because most domestic small and medium-sized enterprises are paying 12.5%. If the average is 6%, it means that a small number of very profitable companies are paying very little.