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

Yes, tax expenditure for research and development. This is public money that we are spending. It is a tax expenditure. As of 2021, it was €753 million. I would like to know what is the most recent figure. I know corporate tax receipts and so on come in later and figures are a bit behind. I would like to know the latest expenditure on research. That is a huge sum of money, at three quarters of a billion euro. If I am reading the budget book correctly, the Minister is planning to give another €27 million on top of whatever is the latest figure. This is one of the largest expenditures we have and the Minister is giving extra, mostly to that small group of multinationals. They will be the main beneficiaries of this, while the majority of our PhD researchers, some 10,000 of them, are living in abject poverty.