Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The Minister's reply is very disappointing. One of the issues the commission — I noted its imbalanced composition and counted 11 or more persons connected with taxation advisory services of one kind or another — should address is that, unfortunately, we have grown a rather unequal society in recent years where there are millionaires who pay no tax. We have the phenomenon of persons who can leave the country at midnight to be non-resident for tax purposes — they live here for all intents and purposes but claim they are non-resident for tax purposes.

I read the Minister's remarks yesterday on Liechtenstein, where he congratulated the German authorities on their action in getting some information on tax dodging of a high order organised, I think, by the Royal House of Liechtenstein. Tax avoidance of that scale is not perpetrated by ordinary people. It has the royal stamp of approval of the super wealthy. The Minister felt that what the Germans did was correct. I congratulate him on that rather more egalitarian approach, not often evident from him.

If he praises the German authorities for pursuing tax dodgers from Germany who are hiding their money in trusts in Liechtenstein, why not ask the Commission on Taxation to look at our own cherished group of people, who have done well? Good luck to them. They are enterprising and entrepreneurial people, but in a republic they should not decide that the rest of us will pay tax but they will contribute nothing. It goes to the foundation of republican principles that everybody contributes.

There is also the issue in the report the Department commissioned in the run up to the budget that the cost in 2006 of the Minister failing to implement section 110 on stamp duty avoidance by developers was €250 million for one year. If the figure is typical, in the boom years of the construction industry, with land prices hyped and development deals, it probably cost €750 million over a three year period. Once again, there is one law for the little people and another for people who have the resources to indulge in tax avoidance on the scale essentially encouraged by the Government.

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