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

I do not have a problem with small and medium enterprises getting money from the €753 million but I have a big problem with companies that are posting staggering profits getting it. Can the Minister tell us, not the number of companies that benefit, but what proportion goes to certain companies? We know that much of our corporate tax revenue comes from a small number of companies. How much of that is going to that small group of companies? When the Minister described those criteria, precisely the example I gave comes up, which is a company developing the iPhone 15 because there is a technological advancement to the iPhone 15.2 or whatever. That would count, would it not?

We are subsidising to the tune of a large portion, I suspect, of €753 million, the advancement of technology for the latest upgrade of the iPhone for companies that are making a fortune rather than, for example, giving it to small and medium enterprises or giving it to our PhD researchers who, I repeat, are living in poverty, and whose stipends are significantly below the level of income that postgraduate researchers get in most of the rest of Europe. There, for example, it is not unusual for PhD researchers to get €40,000 or €50,000 and to be on proper employment contracts, which very few of our PhD researchers in public universities are on.

I do not think the Minister is really addressing that inequity and I think he should. They are getting enough of the €753 million. Why does he have to give them more?