Dr. Seán Healy:

The standing commission on taxation is a very good idea. Tax changes and the impact of tax expenditure etc. must be kept under constant review. That should be done professionally, with people of real expertise doing it on an ongoing rather than one-off basis. Mr. Murphy spoke about the minimum effective corporate tax rate earlier. We see this as critical and we suggest a rate of 6%, given Ireland's 12.5% corporation tax rate. As we move along, this seems to be on the agenda of the OECD now, and there has been quite an amount of publicity about that in recent times. That is not bad. We have heard much negative reaction from some sectors in Ireland but there needs to be a fundamental overhaul internationally, not just in Ireland, of the whole approach to corporate taxation. Minimum effective corporate tax rates are part of that solution.

The Deputy asked about top bankers' pay. We would find it very hard to go along with the idea that a banker does not have enough income when he or she is receiving €500,000 per year. It is mostly a "he" I suppose, although not always. The minimum wage is less than €10 per hour and the rate of poverty is 15%, with 250,000 children living in such poverty. Increasing banker pay at the top end would not be a priority for us.

Money will be available and there is the overall issue of whether this should be allocated for tax cuts rather than other matters. Our preference is for that to be invested in infrastructure in areas like social housing, water, public transport and broadband. Part of the available amount should also go towards improving our services in healthcare and education, as well as addressing matters like childcare, as raised by Deputy Lisa Chambers earlier. That is in addition to other issues we have discussed. Our preference is to move in that direction rather than giving tax cuts.

There are some points to be made about tax cuts if there is an insistence on going that way. On page seven of our budget choices, we have produced the results of a study demonstrating seven different options for dealing with income tax and the universal social charge. It is interesting as only two of the options would turn out to be fair, as the other five would benefit the better-off more than those with low to middle income. There are two options that would spread the benefit fairly across all people. The first increases the personal tax credit rather than the tax band, as widening the band is not an effective way of being fair. The second option is a combination of reducing the 0.5% and 2% universal social charge rates. The results are in the document and we can provide more detail if people are interested. There is a broader question that Mr. Murphy might like to take up.