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

-----partly because this debate seems like a box ticking exercise and people seem to think it is enough to simply mention all of the risks. From what the Minister has said the policy seems to be to keep the ship steady and everything will be all right. I did not get that sense from reading the risk assessments. He has identified three risks as highly likely to happen in housing; changes in corporate tax risks; and EU climate change and renewable energy targets.

I find it slightly disturbing that the Minister must come back to us on the last matter. To my mind, that is the typical approach adopted by the Government. I mean the risk is galloping towards us but the Government has not taken it seriously, including its impact. The matter has been identified as high risk but the Government has decided not to do a lot about it.

On the issue of corporate tax risks, there is a contradiction. I was slightly heartened to hear about an increase in wage share. On several occasions I have mentioned the wage gap and the reduction in wage share as against money going to profits and so on. The drop in wage share is a historical trend across the world since the 1980s. Sadly, Ireland is the worst because the wage share has dropped more dramatically here than everywhere else. The drop in wage share does not surprise me given the policies that we have pursued. We have been particularly enthusiastic supporters of a neoliberal policy of low taxes, particularly on the corporate sector and on wealth. The wage situation feeds into the housing difficulty because people cannot afford to buy houses. Even if we build houses people cannot afford to buy them. We resolved that contradiction the last time by allowing people to borrow crazy amounts of money even though their wages would not allow them to pay for the stuff that they were buying. Now, we or the banks are reluctant to do so. As a result we are caught in a bind where housing is a problem.

Let us remember that Minister has identified housing as a high risk. Housing could become a major problem in terms of our capacity to grow given that the economy is moving towards full capacity. How are people going to pay for the stuff? The solution is to address the wage share and break from the policy of low corporate taxes and low taxes on wealth. The Government is not interested in doing so. The Minister has identified housing as a high risk yet the Taoiseach travelled to Washington and commended Donald Trump on joining the race to the bottom on that issue. Incredibly, the Taoiseach boasted in Washington that Trump is copying us.