Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Minister spoke about vulnerabilities and the expectations for the kinds of services that we ought to provide in this country. A degree of consensus is building about some of the lessons that have been learned about where there are gaps in public services as a result of the pandemic and how we have responded to it, as well as about the need to improve our public services, particularly our healthcare service, in the longer term. The programme for Government has ruled out any increases in income tax, regardless of what one might be earning, over the duration of this Administration. The Minister will have been briefed on the Central Bank report issued a couple of weeks ago, which shows clearly the level of wealth held by a relatively small minority of people in this country and the nature of that wealth. It should not be beyond us to introduce a net wealth tax as has been achieved in analogous EU states to try to tax that wealth in a smart fashion. Most wealth is held not in income but in assets, property, inherited wealth and other ways. It can be done. Is it something the Minister is considering? We need to broaden the tax base and make it much more sustainable because we are vulnerable to international shocks. We are reliant on corporation tax and there are a lot of moving parts around the international conversation on corporation tax at the moment. It is possible to achieve the design of a wealth tax that would have a minimal impact on the productive economy. Is that something the Minister and his officials are looking at now? Is work taking place in the Department of Finance on that possibility?

The following point has already been mentioned and, in fact, I raised it in the Dáil when we had an opportunity to ask Priority Questions in the middle of this week. IFAC has referenced in a recent report the requirement for a €10 billion multi-annual stimulus fund. Is that fund interchangeable with the Minister's notion of a national recovery fund? Where does he plan to obtain the resources to fund that recovery fund?

The Minister will know that I, along with the Labour Party and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, have been a proponent of the idea of this country adopting a German-style short-time work scheme. Deputy Boyd Barrett has referenced, for example, the particular difficulties experienced in the arts and entertainment sector and by embedding the kind of short-time work scheme that has been in place in Germany since the last recession, we can address in a more sustainable fashion the kinds of problems we are having at the moment.

That would also allow us to embed the ideas of training and of conditionality around State support for the business sector. I would appreciate the Minister's remarks on that.