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

We had the discussion about why the Minister thinks the sort of measures I would propose would have the multinationals running for the hills, and all of that. In previous pre-budget documentation, the Minister provided figures and a sectoral breakdown of profits and increases. Does he have those figures available, given they are not in any of the documents I have seen? It would be useful for us and for the public to know how much profits have increased and to give a sectoral breakdown of that over recent years. It is very difficult to judge the Minister's budgetary decisions, particularly for ordinary people, unless we know how everybody is doing relative to one another in the economy. These were given in the past and, in previous years, we had graphs showing that transport profits were up this much, construction was up this much, IT was up this much, and so on. I do not expect the Minister to have those figures now but I would like it if the Department had them because I think we deserve to know.

Broadly, would the Minister accept that profits have increased by a very significant margin more than wages and salaries over recent years? Would he accept that, while that continues to be the case, the benefits of economic progress are going disproportionately to profits and the people who accrue those profits and that, in turn, increases the gap between the very rich and the rest? The evidence for that is manifold. The wage share, for example, has consistently fallen over the past 20 years and has fallen dramatically in this country, where it is worse than almost anywhere else in the western world. Does the Minister accept this is a fact? Does he think there is anything he should be considering about that when making budgetary choices? It is never really discussed although, interestingly, while wealth taxes are almost a subject to be laughed at here, in the United States they are talking about redistributive wealth tax rates. Is that even a consideration for the Minister to look at, in particular who is getting the benefit of economic growth?