Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I do understand that. I have two points. It is worth saying, although it is never referred to, that corporate profits are absolutely stratospheric at the moment. They are heavily concentrated, for sure, but I do not see pharmaceutical companies going anywhere. A huge amount of the wealth is concentrated in pharmaceuticals. From information gleaned from those who have started to examine household wealth distribution, we know it is heavily concentrated among a small group at the top. How you design a wealth tax is an issue but it certainly seems that a very legitimate policy option to consider is the imposition of wealth taxes on the very highest earners and the super profits being made by a small group.

I agree that if we solve the housing issue, we can begin to solve many problems. Has Professor McMahon any thoughts or comments on the issue of vacant and derelict properties? It seems that addressing this could benefit in meeting our climate objectives and also help to solve our housing problem quickly. When I examine some developments, such as at the former Israeli Embassy and the former Jurys hotel site, I note we are knocking down massive buildings in order to rebuild very similar ones. What a waste of labour. I have given just two examples but we have many vacant buildings. Knocking them down is bad from a climate point of view and is also a waste of labour. We build new buildings on the sites instead of refurbishing the old ones, which would be better for the climate and better with respect to the deployment of labour resources when there are major constraints concerning the availability of labour. Is that a reasonable thought?