Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses and I very much welcome Mr. Tang's comments on radio this morning. Mr. Tang comes from the Netherlands and it is important that he is being honest about that country's role in a global chain of tax avoidance. We need to be honest about Ireland's role in that chain. It is tax piracy not only against other European states but also against less developed countries. It is a huge robbery of resources. We must break with the whole model and philosophy of tax competition, which is a disaster. Ultimately, the only winners in the long run are the large corporations. Precisely as Mr. Tang said, the illusion is of choice but the choice is only ever downwards.

I will start with a question to Mr. Tang on the global picture in the context of something he described very accurately, particularly if one looks at the graphs over a period of decades regarding the share of wealth going to labour and the share going to capital. One can overlay on top of that graph a picture of global effective corporate tax rates which shows the decline - a key factor in that shift of wealth. How can that be reversed? I agree, in principle, with the CCTB, albeit there are some issues with the formula which we can address. However, no one will claim that it will be a very substantial contribution to reversing the trend. How does one do that?