Mr. Simon Murtagh:

Billion. That is broadly along the same kind of level of ambition we are positing. It is such a pity that Professor Ocampo, who is one of the leading international advocates of reform in this area, could not join us today. I just got a message that he has been prevented from joining us. He was, until recently, minister for finance in Colombia, a country which is still pursuing a wealth tax. One of the big events in Latin America is the advent of tax summits, which have just started this year. The Latin American countries will come together to look at progressive taxation, en bloc and as a group, to stop capital flight, which is one of the main concerns when it comes to wealth tax and has been one of the problems in the past.

A narrative existed that wealth taxes do not work, which would be heard in business circles. Oxfam has been aggressively refuting that in recent years. It is also a matter of facing down media stories which are imbalanced or rely on wealth advisors' opinion, rather than empirical fact. In Norway, there was quite a scary story about a flight of billionaires. I think there were approximately 30 individuals, but the facts we have based on the International Monetary Fund, IMF, fiscal monitor is that revenue has increased in Norway and inequality has decreased since its wealth tax. Those are the important facts about the quality of Norway's revenue collection and its society. Since its wealth tax was introduced, Spain has a greater revenue and a greater number of people pay taxes. France is an interesting example where wealth tax was attacked, in a sense, in that financial wealth was taken out of it by Macron. However, there are benefits in that one can see more productive investments since France brought in a tax on dividends. Success stories can be seen in new wealth taxes right across those examples.

The Deputy asked about statistics. In Oxfam we use a consultancy called Wealth-X, which allows Oxfam's statisticians to do is to delve more deeply into the fractions of wealth holding. The Central Bank, which he mentioned, tries to reduce it to deciles but as he knows, we are talking about the top 1% and in fact, we are talking about the fraction of extreme wealth even within that 1%. The group is target-based for the wealth tax model. We have proposed 0.36% or 0.4% of the Irish population who hold more than €5 million or €50 million of net wealth. It is a tiny cohort of individuals. Wealth-X looks at patterns of wealth holding by high-net wealth individuals, that is, where they hold their wealth in terms of assets and stocks and then it tries to understand, when it looks at national statistics of wealth, how those high-net wealth individuals would structure their wealth. However, Wealth-X does not base its analysis on income because that is the great failing in trying to assess wealth. Traditionally, we have had income tax returns but that does not tell us patterns of wealth. We have had income tax returns, but that does not tell us patterns of wealth. Statistical surveys by the CSO are notorious for underestimating high wealth, because there is no obligation to report. Of course, there are the national and international statistics, the CSO and the Central Bank and the OECD would analyse wealth at international levels, but our analysis allows us to delve more deeply into the fractions and centiles. That is an outlay of the sources. We have a full methodology note to our report we will try to pass on.