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

On the research and development tax credit, given the limited amount of money that may be available for any discretionary budget measures,

why does Chambers Ireland not argue for redirecting some of the research and development funding that is currently disproportionately benefiting a small group of IT companies and big multinational corporations rather than seeking an extension of the research and development element to those who are not getting the funding? The research and development tax credit has absolutely ballooned to approximately €700 million and, overwhelmingly, this money is going to a handful of multinational corporations, the names of which names we are all familiar with. In the interests of developing a sustainable economy, should that money not be redirected towards SMEs and public universities rather than being extended to another group of people? I am of the view that it should be redirected. I do not see why Apple should get a research and development tax credit for coming up with the latest upgrade to its iPhone 11 Pro. Directing money towards such an upgrade should not be a priority. Why do we not invest the money in projects that will benefit the domestic economy?

To follow up on what Deputy Broughan stated, would our guests agree that any consideration the Minister for Finance might be giving to holding back on social welfare increases or introducing measures that might reduce the spending power of ordinary working people is completely wrong in the face of Brexit or a possible international recession? Should we not be boosting the purchasing power of ordinary people because that would benefit Chambers Ireland members and also prevent suffering and hardship being visited on ordinary working people as a result of economic turbulence or difficulty?

I welcome the comments on public transport, childcare, infrastructure and so on. Will our guests elaborate on those? What do we mean when we refer to investing more in public transport in order to tackle climate change, alleviate congestion, etc.? We should move to free public transport because that would really encourage people to abandon their cars. There must be far greater frequency on public transport routes, greater reliability and public transport routes that are run on a not-for-profit basis. The latter could be operated in areas where they are not commercially viable, in the narrow sense, in order to get people to use public transport. Do our guests agree that we need to heavily subsidise public transport systems? One could make the same argument about childcare. What do they have to say about the blight of vacant shop units and vacant accommodation units above shops? What should be done to prevent such units becoming vacant? There are units on the main street in Dún Laoghaire that have been empty for years.