Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses. I must apologise to them as I was in the Chamber for the past hour and a half, and I have missed the discussion up to now. I will ask the questions I had prepared but I may be repeating what has been said. As I do not like people repeating themselves, the witnesses should feel free to say if they have already covered an issue.

One of the issues I am interested in is the analysis of taxation in this State and how the weight of taxation is broken down by taxes falling on labour versus capital. In the former category, I refer to income tax, universal social charge, USC, etc., and in terms of tax on capital, there is corporation tax, capital gains tax, etc. Globally, over the past 40 years, taxes on capital have been falling while tax on labour has been rising. This kind of analysis in an Irish context could be very valuable. The distribution of taxation is a pull-policy issue. Legislators having such information would be really helpful in informing the debate. Is that something the commission is looking at?