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

We have had the discussion and the Minister is essentially saying that we will scare the horses of investment. He is suggesting that the wealthy will fly out of the country if we tax them a bit more but that is an old argument that has been around forever. It is a justification for never trying to address the inequality in wealth and income. It is worth saying that the Government was put under pressure to raise the corporate tax rate to 15%. It has now done that and the world has not fallen apart. The spokespeople for some of the big multinationals that the Minister is worried might be frightened by all of this have often said that the tax regime here is not the main reason they are here and we should actually listen to that. They are here because we are part of the European market, we have an educated workforce, a certain level of political stability and so on. I do not agree with the idea that they are going to run away from the amount of profits they are making in this country, unless we do something very radical indeed.