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

I commend Deputy Pearse Doherty on bringing this up. He has made all the relevant points. I have raised this point a number of times. Could the Minister tell us the tax expenditure for intra-group transactions in the latest available figures? It has increased dramatically in recent years. Revenue provides a table on expenditures, credits and reliefs for corporate tax. I do not have the figures in front of me but between 2016 and 2017, if I remember correctly, the tax expenditure under the heading intra-group transactions jumped from something like €2 billion to €9 billion. This is obviously a major loophole which is being exploited by companies like those in the Goodman Group and many others. Such companies are lending themselves money via subsidiaries and claiming that the repayments on that are a cost and writing down their tax liability. It is a complete scam and those loopholes need to be closed. It is blatant tax avoidance.

Has the Minister up-to-date figures on what I called the loophole, or tax expenditure, or whatever the Minister wants to call it?