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

It is not agreed. I will briefly comment on the section. We have a concern about this credit, which has ballooned over recent years. It is one of the biggest apart from the one I mentioned earlier. Notwithstanding some of the amendments the Minister is making to benefit smaller companies, the intragroup transactions or group relief and the research and development tax credit, which cost €658 million in 2020, mostly benefit the staggeringly profitable multinational corporations. The public is paying for their research activities through this relief. In recent weeks, we have seen the sort of thanks we are getting from these companies with people being unceremoniously sacked. That may potentially be a harbinger of the big trouble the policy of over-reliance on foreign direct investment from these companies could lead us into. It is certainly folly to spend public money in this way. Tax expenditure is the expenditure of public money even though it is not looked at in the same way as direct expenditure by, for example, the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science when investing in Science Foundation Ireland or our universities. However, it is public money and its expenditure should be scrutinised and thought about.

Pretty much of all of the economists and people who come before the Committee on Budgetary Oversight to comment on the issue of tax expenditure have said we should keep a close eye on these expenditures and whether they are delivering on the objectives we set for them. They say we should always look to see whether a tax relief or direct expenditure is the best way to expend public money to achieve given objectives. The general consensus, not just on the left, is that direct expenditure is better and that we need to not roll over reliefs such as these without carefully examining the benefit we are getting from them. There is a very significant question mark over whether the best way to stimulate research and development to the benefit of our society is to give €658 million, a figure that is rising, largely to small number of incredibly profitable multinational companies rather than giving it to, seeing as it is Science Week, Science Foundation Ireland or our public universities, which could do with a lot of money, or removing fees for postgraduate students or improving stipends for them so that people who are engaging in research in our universities do not feel they cannot go on and complete their research studies or work because they just cannot afford to live. I believe it would be better to expend that money on removing those sorts of financial obstacles and burdens on people trying to do postgraduate study or on stimulating and investing in publicly oriented research rather than research that only benefits a small number of companies that are already making enormous profits. That is our view. It is worth articulating rather than just letting these things roll on unquestioned year after year.