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

Unlike the witnesses, I am an opponent of SARP. It is difficult for many people to swallow the fact that these extremely highly-paid executives get this tax relief. Given that there are so many other tax reliefs available, and that such large profits are being made by the corporations coming in here, what evidence do the witnesses have that there would be any less investment by these companies if we removed SARP? It seems like icing on a very big cake for people who are already making a lot of money and being very well paid. I would be interested in the witnesses' comments on that.

I refer to the research and development tax credit. We all want to see research and development, but as Ms Gunnell indicated, the small and medium enterprises are not really benefiting from it. They do not have the necessary resources or research and development departments, and they are fearful, from what Ms Gunnell said, of getting it. Who is getting it? I think we all know the answer to that. It is now worth €700 million, which is not an insubstantial figure, and is going to the usual suspects - the big multinational corporations, such as Google, Facebook, or pharmaceutical companies - which are also benefiting from a whole range of other tax reliefs, credits and allowances. If we want to have indigenous research and development and to encourage the SME sector, particularly in the context of something like climate change, would €700 million or even a fraction of that not be better targeted at encouraging indigenous research and development by SMEs or public universities? Universities were mentioned, but they are currently dependent on whether a big multinational wants to outsource something to them.

Surely, there is a case for redirecting some or all of that money into public universities to increase their research and development capacities, which are more likely to be focused on what might be good for the country or help to advance renewable energy, instead of assisting someone to come up with the iPhone 11 or a new app that is only slightly different from a previous app. Would it be better to redirect that money to target things that are a priority for us?

Ms Gunnell kept her comments on the film relief quite brief and did not pass any judgment on it. I do not know how familiar she is with it. How can one test its effectiveness? The conditions attached to it are that it will provide quality employment and training and contribute to Irish cultural expression and endeavour. Is it achieving those goals? We were told by members of the film industry who were lobbying for it that we were getting 17,000 good jobs for it and so on. However, when the Department of Finance looked into the relief, it found that it led to far fewer jobs, a total of approximately 2,000. Some people maintain that the 2,000 jobs are completely precarious and that those employed in them have almost no rights. It is not quality employment and there is no proper training structure. At a minimum, we need a comparison of the cultural output since that type of relief was brought in and, for example, that under previous methods of financing the film industry. I am not convinced that the output in terms of the criteria set out in the relief has been better over the past ten years than was previously the case.