Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have spoken about this before and I have an amendment relating to it, which I will resubmit on Report Stage. I agree with Deputy Burton's position on banks paying more. I will make just one point because the Minister has stated on three occasions as an excuse for not moving in this year that to apply an additional or increased corporation tax on the banking sector would mean that it would have to be applied across the board. That is simply not true. Perhaps he does not know it is not true. He can do this if he so wishes. I will give him an example.

The Minister's counterpart in Britain has done this. On 1 January 2016 a new taxation measure was introduced in Britain and came into effect for that accounting period. It was an 8% surcharge on banks' profits above the corporation tax levied on every other company in Britain on profits above £25 million. Therefore, if the Minister is trying to tell me that what Westminster has done is somehow impossible for us to do, that is not the case.

Also, looking at the OECD study, for example, in terms of carrying losses forward, there is a carving out. We are one of the only countries in the OECD study that allows for unlimited losses to be carried forward, in that there is no cut-off point, and that allows companies to carry losses forward at 100%. Again, will the Minister carve out a sector for the banks? Of course he can. How do I know this? Because Brian Lenihan did it and we passed the measure into law. It was already done until Fine Gael and the Labour Party changed the laws in terms of capital reasons within the banks.

The report published last year, and I welcome an update to it, does not state there would need to be an additional capital injection to the banks if losses carried forward were restricted. I know that the Minister did not make that claim, but he said he would be one of the ones pulling me up if the unintended consequences arose. I just wanted to make that point. The report did not state that. Also, if the losses to be carried forward were reduced to 25%, the State would benefit in a big way beyond any potential reduction in the value of shares because those losses could be carried forward at a point in time.

The maths are there, and if the Minister wants to go through this in some detail, perhaps we could do that on Report Stage. The Brits have already done this in the form of a surcharge on corporation tax effective from 1 January 2016, so the Minister's claim on three occasions that he simply could not do it is not true. Of course he can restrict the carrying forward of losses by banks because Brian Lenihan did it as part of the NAMA legislation.

I will leave it at those two points. I just wanted to correct the record.