Maureen O'Sullivan (Dublin Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Christian Aid, together with other NGOs, has done amazing work, as usual, in providing incisive insight into the area of taxation. Irish Aid has a very strong and positive reputation because it is poverty focused and is untied. The report published by this committee reviewing Irish Aid recognised that. Within that report there was a strong recommendation on the area of policy coherence. I totally accept what Mr. McCaughey has said on that matter. It was said that the Department of Finance did not have to do this. How did it get it so wrong? How were the selected countries chosen?

We know about the changes that have occurred in Zambia. What brought about those changes? Where did the impetus for that come from? Are the witnesses seeing similar examples emerging from other African countries? At the conference I attended it was great to hear of the work going on within African countries - led by Kenya - in terms of assessing tax issues within the continent and the need to help one another. There is a need to build capacity for budget and finance committees in African countries in order that they can lead on the tax income revenue on which they are missing out. Is Christian Aid involved in anything like that?

On foreign direct investment, I have been pushing for sight of the human rights in business report. It has finally been released and I note Ms Jennifer Higgins was at the conference in Galway. While it was good, I was slightly disappointed that it did not go far enough and that we were not seeing any impetus to implement the recommendations it contained. Ireland is looking for new trading partners because of Brexit and so on. We have a great reputation when it comes to aid and foreign countries, particularly African countries, want to trade with us because they believe we will be ethical. However, I believe that we need to generate much greater awareness among businesses of that report in order that they will take on the recommendations it contains.

It is amazing that tax did not feature more prominently within the SDGs. The taxes, if we get them, will pay for those goals.