Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Some extraordinary role reversal has happened here without me noticing. Deputy Boyd Barrett is making the case for tax reductions that would make the most hardened neoliberal wince. He is arguing not just for the reduction of a tax but for its complete abolition below a certain level. They tend to be the kind of arguments I hear from the other end of the political spectrum than the one the Deputy associates himself with. I say this to him with respect, but also with as much sincerity as he offers in making his views known to me.

I believe that it is important we ask those who can afford to make a contribution to the cost of public services in our country to do so. While I accept and understand, to use Deputy Healy-Rae's analogy, that the purse and wallet of many are under real pressure at the moment, we should reacquaint ourselves with the way in which the USC is structured and designed, which is to ask those who earn more to pay more. The figures speak for themselves. Somebody in the PAYE sector earning between €12,012 and €21,295 pays 2%. Someone earning more than €100,000 per year, or €70,044 per year, in the PAYE sector pays four times that or 8%.

This is a progressive tax. When I make the case for its progressivity, I acknowledge and appreciate that for many it is an additional challenge, and additional payment they have to make, at a time when we are seeing the cost of living go up for many in Ireland and elsewhere.

However, to respond to that by putting in place a fundamental reduction and change in USC as the Deputy is proposing is not something that I believe should be referenced in the Finance Bill. I appreciate the constructiveness with which Deputy Healy-Rae has put his argument forward, but if we put into a Finance Bill a report to the effect that we will look at doing something, the rest of the world will look at that and assume it will happen. That is not a signal that we should be sending at the moment. One of the reasons I believe that is because of another issue that we will begin to debate as the afternoon goes on, namely, the change in corporate tax policy.

To deal with the point that Deputy Boyd Barrett made regarding trying to find ways in which large companies should pay more, look at what is happening at the moment, namely, a large and historic OECD agreement on this matter into which Ireland has taken an important decision to enter and to make the case for. Is the Deputy arguing that we should be doing more than that?