Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

My proposal seeks an increase in the corporation profit tax from 12.5% to 20%. A chorus of people will say, "Oh no, you can't do that", because it effectively doubles the corporation profit tax rate. People never look at this from the other point of view. I mean if the law at the moment says that a company can keep 87.5% of its profits but one changes that to say that a company can keep 75% of its profits then one reduces the corporate profit by one-seventh, which does not seem so drastic.

Corporations are making mega profits in this State at the moment. One can see, as the Minister pointed out earlier on the overall corporate tax take, that it was less than €11 billion in 2019 but more than €12 billion in 2020, which is an increase of more than 15% year-on-year. That is a clear indication of mega profits. In fact, 40% of those profits were made by just ten corporations such as Facebook, Google and Apple.

Why do companies come to Ireland? It is not just about the tax rate. It is due to our educated workforce, which still remains, and their abilities. Also, this State has access to the EU and has an English speaking workforce, which is in a stronger position now because of Brexit than would have been the case a couple of years ago. For all of these reasons my proposal is not extreme but is quite modest. My proposal would result in a huge pool of resources at the feet of our society that can be used for productive purposes like investment in social housing and the healthcare system.