Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I do not want to diverge into a debate on autism services. Any parent of a child with autism will say he or she needs access to services. The Minister for Finance could have announced a significant amount of funding for services to be delivered to children and adults with autism, but it was not provided. Instead, he announced a sum of €2 million for a strategy that might or might not be followed by services in the future. He also announced a tax scheme that would not be in place in 2020 but which will, as a result of section 8 of the Bill, confer in some circumstances a benefit of €111,000 to multimillionaires. That is not fair. A teenager with autism in my community will say it is not fair. Any parent who is struggling to find a school placement will say it is not fair, as will any parent or teacher who cannot obtain a diagnosis for a child who has all of the traits of autism. I accept that the people in question will pay tax, but that does not take away from the fact that we will all vote on this measure, although some may abstain, to confer a benefit of €111,000 which others will not gain. A person who is working flat out or running his or her own company and earning good money will not get it as it is only for foreign employees who will come here under a specially assigned programme. The argument is that it is about creating jobs, but let us look at the facts which speak loudly. The 1,084 people who availed of this benefit in 2017 had to state in their tax returns how many jobs had been created as a result of this €28.1 million tax giveaway. How many jobs did they or their companies create as a result of it? The figure was an 383 additional jobs. This figure cannot be verified, but it is what the companies are telling Revenue. It represents a cost of €78,000 per job. If we think that is good value for money in job creation, we have got bigger problems than this scheme.

The question is about fairness in the tax code and this is not fair. The scheme is costing us a fortune and the cost is increasing rapidly each year, going from €1.9 million in 2013 to €5.9 million in 2014 and nearly doubling again in 2015 to €9.5 million. It doubled again in 2016 to €18.1 million and went up by another €10 million in 2017 to €28.1 million. We do not yet have the figures for 2018 and 2019, but if they follow this trend, the figure for this year is likely to be between €40 million and €50 million. If it follows the same trend next year, it could be anything up to €100 million. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, the members of which will support the Minister, may believe that somewhere, somehow, 31 individuals earning €1 million should benefit by €111,000 as a tax bonus in this Finance Bill. The Minister may argue that the eight individuals who earned in excess of €3 million in 2017 are so hard done by that they need this committee and Parliament to give them that extra bonus. I do not. It is wrong and appalling, given all of the challenges people face and the lack of resources in certain key sectors.

Today there are close to 700 patients on trolleys. It is crazy that patients who are vulnerable and in need of treatment are lying on trolleys in hospitals while we are putting resources into this scheme. That is not fair and it is our job to call it out. Not many people know about the scheme, but it is appalling and should be ended. It was supposed to end. The Finance Act states it is to finish at the end of this year. However, it is not going to finish because the Minister is going to keep giving the benefit and I am sure Fianna Fáil will give it too. I am sure some members who have not even been following this debate will come in when we call a vote and push the button to award this benefit. They may not know that people could be watching this debate and telling themselves that they will be €111,000 better off as a result of a decision the finance committee will take in the next few minutes. Some of them will not receive that amount, but there are up to 1,000 people who may qualify. Many of them are wondering whether they will receive it, while everybody else, stuck at home, is paying tax at a rate of 40% above €35,000. The individuals targeted by the scheme can reduce their tax liability by waiving 30% of the income they earn between €75,000 and €1 million.

I feel very strongly about this issue which I will push to a vote, having argued about it every way I can in the past few years. It speaks volumes about Fine Gael. Who has the ears of the Government? It is not the kids I see or the parents who come to my constituency clinic. The Minister will say nobody has a monopoly of empathy and I know that he is empathetic.

If only those parents had access to the people who designed this section of the Bill and have given this amount of money to the individuals in question, but they do not. The people concerned waltz in and out of Government Buildings. They are the tax accountants who are telling the Minister that this provision is needed. Why is it needed? They are saying it is needed because 383 additional jobs were created as a result of this €28 million tax break, but the figure has actually dropped. The number of additional jobs created under the scheme dropped by 90 between 2016 and 2017, while, at the same time, the amount of money we had to give the individuals in question went up by €10 million. Communities are crying out for investment. If there was anything near this level of investment, they would create 383 jobs in the morning.