Mr. Owen Reidy:

I will make a brief comment on the whole tax piece. The Deputy made a really important point about how all of us, that is, workers, citizens and businesses, saw the value of a resourced state during the Covid crisis because we all relied on the State. Right across the western world, whether countries had centre-left or centre-right governments there was furlough, supports for businesses, supports for workers and supports for people not in work. It was really important.

That has generated a bit of a debate in society about who pays for what and our tax system. We have a very progressive income tax system. We are an all-island organisation with 200,000 members north of the Border and about 550,000 south of it. A worker earning X amount here is paying much more tax than they would in Northern Ireland if they are earning a significant amount and that is as it should be. The Deputy is a parliamentarian who is very close to his constituents. I would like to think we are quite close to our members and the feedback we were getting from what people call "the squeezed middle", many of whom we represent, is they did not want €15 or €16 back in taxes, but better childcare, better social services and better public services that are more affordable. People realise the State needs to be resourced. We did a piece of work with Dr. McDonnell's organisation, NERI, a couple of years ago looking at what Irish workers contribute, and Irish workers pay European taxes in that they pay about 98% of the taxes workers in wealthy European countries pay. The distribution is different as we have made a decision to take the lowest-paid out of the income tax net. That is just a political choice. However, when it comes to what employers pay, Irish employers pay about 48% of what wealthy European employers do. That gap has to be bridged. It cannot be done overnight but it should be done over two terms of government. That would be an extra €9 billion in revenue just to get to the norm. Mr. O'Brien quite legitimately makes the point there are costs in doing business and there are increased costs, but a lot of the things we are talking about here, like auto-enrolment, sick leave and other statutory measures are about catching up rather than leading the charge in Europe. There has to be a rebalancing. Workers working in Ireland pay European taxes but do not get European services, or not yet.

We acknowledge some of the progress that has been made, but some of the things that have been temporary need to be permanent and we need to look at the report of the Commission on Taxation and Welfare very seriously and start to endorse it. It is not about taxing labour as such, but more about taxing other elements of wealth. That body was a fairly sober, middle-of-the-road group of people rather than a bunch of radicals and we need to take the report seriously. We endorse it. To Deputy Healy-Rae's point about the two people working who are paying 50% tax, if people are paying their taxes they want to get value for the services they pay for and that is the gap, not giving a reduction in tax to people on €50,000 a year so they have an extra €15 in their pocket. Wages and wage-bargaining should deal with that in the private and public sectors. I will leave it at that.