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

I thank Professor Moloney. I am sorry for hesitating; I was just making sure I was giving her the correct title. I also thank her team and wish the commission good luck. It is welcome. I apologise that I will also have to run over and speak in the debate on the Finance Bill. It is an interesting contrast in a way because the Finance Bill comprises lots of individual measures relating to different headings such as income tax, USC, corporation tax, property-based taxes and so on. It comprises lots of individual measures. It might be argued that there is no strategic debate going on in respect of the Finance Bill and the taxation measures it contains. That happens to some degree in a budget but in the context of a particular year and particular political pressures. Some questions never get discussed having stood back from those things, so this is a good initiative.

I would like to quiz Professor Moloney a little bit more about how she sees the commission doing that and the extent to which she thinks it is possible to have evidence-based views when many of the issues are heavily contested, not least by the people they affect. The submissions of the people are evidence in and of themselves. With the best will in the world, it strikes me that great numbers of those who are most economically disadvantaged are among those least likely to even know this is happening and will not be terribly well-equipped to engage with it. Does Professor Moloney accept that is a concern and that it is something we must address? How do we get the voices of those who are generally not heard on issues like taxation and what taxation should be there for and welfare and what welfare should achieve heard when it will tend to be - for want of a better word - the political nerds and the people who know about these things who make submissions?

One thing I said about public consultations in a slightly different context is that we should advertise these public consultations. There should be radio advertisements to the effect that a serious look is being taken at tax and welfare in this country, what they are for, how fair they are and whether members of the public think they are working for them. We should be advertising those public consultations. Of course, if we did that, we probably would get many submissions. There would be many more than a couple of hundred. Then, there would be even more work on the hands of the Commission on Taxation and Welfare. I want to run that by Professor Moloney because there is a danger in any public consultation that the voices that are often not heard will not be heard again, even with the best will in the world.

Will Professor Moloney quickly state what she sees as the role of the committee in this process? Is today the day for us to give suggestions as to what we think? I do not think we have time today. However, most people in our committee and possibly some other committees would like to have a discussion about the big strategic questions on tax and welfare that need to be addressed, as well as on our views about how they should be addressed. Professor Moloney might say a word about that. To give a couple of examples, wealth taxes need to be discussed. They happen in some places. They have generally been resisted in this country. However, there is a real debate about them. It is a debate that is also relevant to the climate debate at the moment. To give a big bold statement, unless you deal with the gross and growing inequality in wealth and income across the world, you will not address the climate emergency. I put it up as bluntly as that. Not everybody shares that opinion but I am convinced of that. It is a pretty undisputed fact that the 1%, as they are famously called, although you could call them the 10%, own 50% or 60% of the wealth in this country. Those figures are generally repeated around the world. The bottom 50% have 2% or less of the wealth between them. Unless you address that, I cannot see how you could address the climate emergency. Will the commission look at that sort of thing? What are the serious arguments? Does Professor Moloney feel that at the end of the process, the commission will be able take a position on things like that?

To give another example, I looked at the Commission on Taxation and Welfare's survey. The witnesses might respond to my belief that it is a little bit loaded in respect of the local property tax and the site value tax. First, I still struggle to fully understand what a site value tax is, in comparison with the local property tax. I imagine that many other people would too. There are also other options that are not considered in that binary question the commission is asking. I favour a multiple property tax for the non-principal private residences. I bet that were people asked whether those with multiple properties should be taxed on their property wealth, as against those who just have the family home, a majority would probably state that would be fairer. Why is that question not asked? Should it be asked or will the Commission on Taxation and Welfare ask it? That is just another example. There are some things that might not even occur to people unless one puts the facts in front of them.

One thing that greatly struck me, when looking at tax in the run-up to the most recent budget, particularly in the aftermath of Covid-19, is that corporate profits went through the roof. This followed a consistent pattern over recent years, although it seemed to be even be more pronounced during Covid-19. I believe this year pre-tax corporate profits were €203 billion. That is approximately 127% more than they were a decade ago. They pay approximately €11 billion in tax. All of the workers in this country together earn €127 billion. This figure is a little bit more than half of what the corporations earned. However, the workers paid €27 billion in tax. To me, that is a radical disparity between the corporate sector making huge profits and making much smaller tax contributions relative to its profit income, as against workers who have less income between all of them but who pay a much higher proportion in tax in both absolute and relative terms. Are those sorts of issues going to be addressed, discussed and put to people? There are a few questions there. I can think of a lot more.