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

The context of the article was the correspondent making the point that the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, seemed keen to register the need to rein in public spending. The article referred to troika-style spending reviews for Departments and the need for a special Cabinet meeting. We will note the fact that the Taoiseach has indicated that there is no intent to have such a meeting and we will move on.

The so-called Covid solidarity tax or Covid wealth tax came back into the news at the start of April when a senior official in the International Monetary Fund, IMF, voiced support for it. It landed in Ireland again when a Minister of State - I believe it was Deputy Joe O'Brien of the Green Party - voiced his support for such a tax and wrote to the Minister for Finance in that regard. The basic argument put forward was that there were people who had gained enormously financially since the start of the pandemic and others who had been significant losers on the financial front. Some of the former include large pharmaceutical corporations, corporations that provide Zoom meetings and other social media meetings of that kind, etc. Obviously, people who have lost their jobs and, in particular, the poor and the young have lost out financially. It struck me that the Tánaiste, the Minister for Finance and the Taoiseach were very quick to rule out that tax and argumentation was not given to support the logic of their position. Many commentators wonder whether the ruling out of this suggestion was overly hasty and perhaps put Ireland behind the curve. The IMF is not in any way a radical organisation. It is proposing to clip the wings of the super wealthy in order to defend the system of the super wealthy, but it is proposing this as a serious suggestion. It has been ruled out very hastily, though. Will the Taoiseach comment on the idea that it was overly hasty to do so and that the Government has perhaps-----