Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We had two crashes. We had a crash with the banks, primarily because of commercial property, and then we had a fiscal crash because our tax income and expenditure did not match. I served on the banking inquiry and we saw that, in the Charlie McCreevy era, personal taxation was cut quite substantially and spending increased. Obviously, stamp duty made up the shortfall.

I am concerned about the sustainability of the tax code. We need to look at data, instead of talking about middle-income earners. In the OECD, we have the 29th lowest tax wedge among the 35 member states. How will the Minister convince me that we should actually reduce the tax wedge further? For the average single worker, the tax wedge decreased by 1.8% from 28.9% to 27.1% between 2000 and 2016. In the same period across the OECD, half of the reduction was recognised, almost 1%. We have one of the lowest tax wedges in the OECD. However, the Minister is asking us to endorse taking another €350 million out of the tax net, forgetting all the good we could do in addressing problems with that. He wants to mark Ireland out further as a very low tax economy. Why?