Ms Olivia Buckley:

I thank the Deputy for his interesting remarks. I will make some general comments on why we have focused on this area and Ms O'Brien might wish to add something on the technicalities.

There are a number of reasons for this focus in our report. As Ms O'Brien outlined, we find ourselves with the fourth highest rate of capital gains tax in the OECD with a median percentage of 23%. Countries like Germany and the UK have much lower rates. We view ourselves as an open economy where a cold wind has a significant economic effect, given the nature and scale of our economy.

An issue was raised acutely by the Institute for Fiscal Studies in the UK last week. It outlined that the mobility of capital and people is a risk for Ireland, given that we are a small country neighbouring the UK with Newry less than one hour up the road from here.

Ms O'Brien has researched another issue relating to capital taxes, so I will let her pick up on this point after I have finished. We have a national ambition. Multiple extensive and thorough reports on Brexit were commissioned and well written by many people. There were reports from the then Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Enterprise Ireland and Ireland Connected on the Brexit challenges facing Ireland. One of the major elements that these reports examined was the need to scale up our companies. If one is going to expand and drive into export markets, one needs to scale up. The figures set out in one of those reports - I believe it was Ireland Connected's report - indicated that we needed to scale up our companies by 30%. That requires investment at a time when we as a country have a greater dependency on bank finance than anyone else. Interest rates have been raised as an issue in this regard.

Other countries have far more competitive regimes than ours in terms of attracting angel and third-party investors to companies. We are low compared with the UK, Spain, France, Germany and Sweden.

In terms of the debate on capital or labour, we consider what strategic direction is required, what other countries have used, how competitively do we stand on capital taxation and what do we need to grow our companies not just for the sake of growing them, but to give our people the best chance economically. Going back to the beginning of our argument, this is all about people having world class services and giving children the best chance at education. We need the best hospitals and health services and we want housing, but we must look to Exchequer returns and see what can be accumulated that will allow us to do all of that for our people. This debate is not for the sake of the accumulation of capital and wealth, rather it is about how to give a country of just 4.7 million people the best chance and deciding what role the capital environment will play in that.

It plays an important part in other people's strategies and in the scaling of their companies. As a country, we must ask ourselves what a competitive environment is.