Mr. Simon Murtagh:

First, I will deal with the issue of wealth and emissions, which is really at the heart of the Oxfam report, Climate Inequality: A Planet for the 99%, and then move towards tax. The Senator might come back with those specific questions.

Oxfam internationally, and we as Oxfam Ireland, are quite open to the forms of taxation of wealth that would help in this area. What we have called for is a national conversation about this in Ireland, first of all, so that it does not become too politicised. It can be done either in a citizens' assembly forum or something very like that, in order that we can look at the forms of taxing wealth, how it can be inclusive and build alliances with other countries, certainly with regard how it is being done with in the European Union. Certainly, we all know that is high on the agenda. Of some of the forms of tax that have been mentioned today, a windfall tax is now essentially what is being looked at. It is a tax on excess profits, which is a situation that, year on year, continues to repeat itself, where there is excessive corporate tax. We have seen that since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Income tax is the classic way of reducing inequality and raising revenue. We talk about taxing wealth and specific wealth taxes but income tax, historically and empirically, is where we were able to manage societies much more successfully, I would argue. Therefore, in the climate emergency, that should also be the case. Then there are other forms of wealth tax that the committee is well aware of. Another one, which might be of interest, is specific consumption tax. That is also in that report, where those private jets, superyachts or excessive and conspicuous forms of consumption would be taxed.

In all of that analysis, and to go back to Thomas Piketty, who was mentioned, the classic way to do it is to empower Revenue. It is admired throughout our organisation for the local property tax, LPT, because it was an effective tax, and although we argued it could be more progressive, Revenue was empowered and it did a very good job with the model of collection and so on. Piketty would say that this is a job where we would empower Revenue to do a very good job, and it would act as a kind of reporting law for the whole of society so we would know how much wealth there is, we would have a real empirical base and we could start to work from there.

On the actual emissions that come from certain types of consumption, our report was done with the Stockholm Environment Institute, which was mentioned earlier. If that was being done in Ireland on, for example, specific aviation emissions, that would be a job for the EPA, which is the kind of organisation that would do that.

To come back to the point, we are kind of agnostic on how to do this. We build consensus and we have that national conversation, and we do not allow for political nit-picking and loopholes. That has been the problem with wealth taxes in the past in that they have become politicised. Piketty said there should be no exceptions and that loopholes are not allowed; instead, a bar is created and it is made very progressive above a certain level. We have advocated that it be above €5 million, which is the highest bar, so no wealth below that €5 million would be taxed and only wealth above that. However, we could still raise huge revenue above that threshold. Those are the key principles.