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

I am sorry for coming in late. I was at another meeting. I listened to the contributions that were made and am concerned about them. I have expressed my concerns many times in the past. A wealth tax is ill-advised for our open economy, which is subject to the whims of society around us. We do not have the biggest economy in the world. I keep hearing the phrase that Ireland is a very wealthy country. It is not; our wealth comes from our property values and incomes – our wages and salaries. We saw in the not-too-distant past, when the crunch came to this country and a difficulty arose, that our wealth suddenly disappeared, and we were standing nowhere near the centre of power and authority.

I was listening to the commentary earlier for a while and seem to recall the charity that we are dealing with here was involved with Mo Ibrahim, an entrepreneur and very wealthy telecommunications businessman who was very much in favour of a wealth tax here. However, it appears he was also in favour of investment for charitable donations. In other words, he could foresee circumstances in which society could benefit from charitable donations to poorer countries. I believed we were opposed to that kind of thing. Big businesses could be tempted to use their charitable donations to third countries as a means of paying their taxes. It would be in return for their donations. I do not accept or agree with that and it would not work in our economy.

The final point I want to make is on the concept of a wealth tax.

We did have a wealth tax in this country once upon a time. We abolished it on the grounds that it was driving people who had created wealth to leave the country and take that wealth elsewhere.

We must always be careful because those in the business sector might decide to take their wealth and so on elsewhere. That would not be good from our perspective. We must encourage people of wealth to invest in this country. That is what we have been trying to do for years. There is a contradiction. The bit of wealth that we have we need. If and when the crunch comes, as it did in the not-too-distant past, we need people who will continue to invest in all circumstances, even when things are not going so well for us. We need to be very careful. We have a wealth tax. We have a residential property tax, and I am not sure that people are clamouring for an increase in that. I am not a great supporter of the concept. We need to be cautious and make sure that we do not scare people who have wealth to take their wealth elsewhere, particularly when we know that their assets are mobile and that they can walk.