Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

One of the Minister's predecessors, Deputy Quinn, brought in the 12.5% rate, which the Labour Party believes has brought a great amount of economic benefit to this country.

IDA Ireland stated that overly aggressive use of Ireland's tax benefit by companies, in an international context, results in little substance or value added activity taking place in Ireland. Marginal benefit to Ireland is not something that is advocated by IDA Ireland. What does the Minister feel about that? I am concerned that our economic strategy is not producing the high value jobs that are essential. Instead, we are concentrating excessively on international property rights being located here without the parallel jobs that the economy should be creating. Today's report suggested that Ireland will go from fourth to 21st place in the creation of high level, knowledge economy, information technology jobs. That is a warning to the Government on its economic strategy.

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