Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Dr. Collins and thank him for his very informative briefing. There is a good bit of work taking place in the academic sphere on this subject, which is one I have considered very important since I first examined a finance Bill. During that era - the early 1990s - nobody paid the slightest attention to costing many tax expenditures. There has been considerable debate recently about climate mitigation measures and taking a tax and dividend approach. Should there be a rigorous costing of such an approach?

The figure of €21.4 billion is astonishing. Will Dr. Collins break that down? In its paper, the Parliamentary Budget Office estimated the figure at around €5 billion plus. Dr. Collins said in respect of the last group of reliefs, including mortgage interest relief and so forth, that these are discretionary and arguments can be made for and against them. Will he break the figure down into discretionary measures we take for granted such as personal tax credits and other measures such as capital allowances? We received the Department of Finance's review of a number of expenditures on the day after the budget, which is very unsatisfactory. Should every tax expenditure have a sunset clause and be reviewed? In other words, should there be a timeframe for every measure so that we know that at some stage it will be the subject of a rigorous review?

On the international front, our colleagues at the Parliamentary Budget Office did some work on questions we had relating to the UK. About this time last year, I raised the issue with the Taoiseach. He cited a long list of simple discretionary expenditures and asked me whether I wanted to withdraw them as they were critical to families. He did not really address the core point, however. When I did that, I noticed that countries like France and Italy seem to have spectacular tax expenditures. One might be talking about 10% of GDP. The UK seems to be ahead of the game when it comes to this compared to our performance. I mentioned sunset clauses. Should they all have sunset clauses and be rigorously assessed by this committee and the Dáil?