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

Dr. McDonnell said it should be a precondition that the lowest households do not suffer from the carbon tax and that they see some benefit. Should retrofitting people's homes not also be a precondition? Before there is any question of additional fuel costs, the mechanism should be made available and the resources provided to achieve it, to ensure they do not suffer as a consequence. The fear people have - I certainly have it - is that the carbon tax will go up but the person in an old council house with poor insulation and damp, as the case in a lot of social housing, will be hit with this while it will be years before there is a retrofit programme. At an absolute minimum, any hit that people might take in that regard cannot happen prior to the retrofitting of their home so that they have the opportunity to reduce their energy costs.

I wish to raise something that is never talked about and is never an objective of budgets, although I know the witnesses all think about it.

Interestingly, an exit poll in the recent elections said that something like 85% to 90% of people thought the gap between the haves and the have nots should be reduced. That is an overwhelming majority. It is never an objective in budgets to try to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor and to look at how that will be achieved, although it is beginning to be debated everywhere, even in the United States interestingly. They are starting to debate this because the gap between rich and poor is growing everywhere and even when there is economic growth and slight improvements to people's incomes, the gap is growing and growing. Should that be a budgetary objective? If it is, what should be done to begin to redistribute wealth? I see mention of wealth taxes. I do not know who put those ideas forward and I welcome it but they are quite modest. For example, 1% on assets over €1 million is suggested. Those assets are probably accumulating additional value at about 3% or 4% in reality. Should we not be more radical and ambitious in trying to have wealth taxes that will redistribute wealth?

I have a specific question on childcare. I was at a Single Parents Acting for the Rights of Kids, SPARK, briefing earlier on where it was pointed out that one of the impacts of the national childcare scheme is that, because it will do away with other targeted supports for vulnerable parents who get some support for childcare through childcare employment and training support, CETS, schemes, and community childcare subvention, CCS, schemes, those parents will lose dramatically because of the national childcare scheme as the targeted supports for them will go in favour of the universal scheme. Are the witnesses aware of that and do they have any comments on it?

There is a general acceptance that our over-reliance on foreign direct investment, FDI, and a small number of multi-nationals and the corporation tax receipts coming from them is a vulnerability. How can we diversify away from that? Into what should we be diversifying? To use one example, our committee has said we should look at a research and development tax credit. Some €700 million, which is rising, largely goes to a small number of multinationals. If we are to diversify, do we not need to dramatically reduce that and redirect those research and development funds towards the sort of areas that would give us a more sustainable economy such as public education, public research and development and other strategic areas of the economy that would be more sustainable. Do the witnesses have any comments on that?