Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)

On the different matters that have been raised, I agree with what Deputy Doherty has said. The prominence of these matters is now so much so much higher than they used to be. I was really struck in the Second Stage debate by the number of Deputies from many parties who raised these kind of issues and I had not heard that happen before. It is happening because technology is now making it easier and easier to be involved in the sale of shares and different kinds of financial instruments. It is definitely the case among younger investors and because of this they are now doing it more. While I think at the moment it is still a relatively small amount of activity, it is going to grow as technology makes this easier and easier to do, and if even a portion of, though it has not quite happened yet in Europe and definitely has not happened in Ireland, the scale of retail investment that is happening in America, which is technology-enabled and which is now not just happening in the equity markets but in the whole new world where it is no longer new, that is, the exponentially fast-growing world of bitcoin, crypto assets, etc, comes over to Europe, it will fundamentally change people's participation in investment. I noticed this not just on Second Stage in the Dáil but in the frequency with which these kind of issues are brought up with me generally in Leinster House during different debates and committee appearances.

I will deal with the different issues the two Deputies have raised. The first was deemed disposal. To be very clear, I am not giving any indication as to what will be dealt with in next year's finance Bill. That would be inappropriate to do. Anybody who makes investment decisions should do so on the basis of what the law is today and the tax is today. I am always extremely careful to avoid giving any indication at all in relation to any individual decision that could be made in a finance Bill 12 months from now. What I have generally said is that these kind of issues, and how we make retail investment easier for people to understand the tax consequences of, are something that I do expect to feature more in the finance Bills and budgets of the future. The one area that is not really about the revenue or level of tax per se in relation to it, has become extremely complex. Depending on what kind of investment decision people are making, how they are making it, where the asset that they are buying or buying a share of is located, there are now very many different tax regimes at play here. What we are going to do in the next few months is bring forward a piece of policy work indicating how we are considering these issues and changes that we are going to consider making from a simplification point of view because a growing number of people are participating in it and we need to make tax law, and the implementation of that law, clearer than it is at the moment. That is why in relation to the deemed disposal decision and its consideration in the context of this year's Finance Bill, the cost of doing that according to the figures available to me is €142 million. We believe it is possible that figure could be higher because of various consequences of making the decision. I have to account for that within the particular year of the budget as well.

This is definitely an issue that will get more and more policy attention. This used to be the kind of world in which only professional investors were involved. We now have professional investors who are normal retail investors and there are more of them. This is, therefore, a matter we will have to return to. I also know and want to recognise the value of the funds sector here in Ireland. It has huge employers. They employ people all over the country, not just in Dublin. How we support the growth of that sector is also something that we considered in the context of the funds review that we brought forward around a year ago. We made some progress on a matter that was highlighted in that review in this year's budget.