Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I find this an interesting debate. Mind you, it is not the first time I have heard it. It has been a commonly debated issue in the House for as long as I have been around, and that is not a short time.

I will first address the whole question of multinational corporations. I come from constituency in which many multinational corporations have invested and in which they provide tens of thousands of jobs. I want to set that as part of the background to the debate here. It is suggested, for instance, in the context of the OECD's proposal, which has been adopted, to impose a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15% rate on the basis that this was going to help. Of course, the OECD's proposal was not going to spook anybody, because everybody was in the same boat at the same time. That was the main reason.

We should remember that international corporations only get spooked when it becomes obvious that they are about to be descended upon. Venezuela is a classic example of where this happened. The same debate took place there. There is no reason international corporations would be in any way in favour of having tax deducted at an alarmingly higher rate than had been done before. They have to plan ahead as well. They plan carefully and cautiously. In the case of Venezuela, once it became known what was going to happen, the whole thing collapsed overnight. That is a fact. The consequences of that will be felt in Venezuela for many a day. Unfortunately, the poorer people, the workers about whom we talk so regularly in this House, are the people who suffered most because the international corporations could disappear into the more lucrative areas. That is one thing that we need to bear in mind.

There is another thing we need to keep in mind, and Deputy Boyd Barrett has often explained this carefully and cogently. It relates to how the multinational corporations should be paying more when compared with the rate that individuals in the workforce pay. That is fine. However, no comparison is being made with the number of individuals in the workforce whose employment prospects rest with those corporations. If the corporations moves out of a country, not only will its workforce be hit again and again, but the revenue will disappear as well. The workforce’s tax will be gone and the investor or corporation tax will be gone. The corporations will go somewhere else. In terms of the workforce, they will compete by going to a country that changes its laws. I am not saying that changes in laws are not required from time to time. The Minister has at various times in budgets and in finance Bills closed various loopholes where there was a necessity to do so and where there was obvious abuse of the system. That has been the practice down through the years.

When we present the arguments, it may well be that only the Minister will be on the other side of the argument. It may be that the Minister will be depicted as a cold, harsh, right-wing, Thatcherite, Tory Minister and that nothing else applies. However, that is not the case. There is another argument and it needs to be aired by everyone in the Parliament at all times.