Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I move this amendment on behalf of the Labour Party. It makes a provision that all tax expenditure and schemes would be subject to a full cost-benefit analysis to be published. If the Dáil and Fianna Fáil while in government had adopted this approach, particularly after 1997 and 1998, we probably would not have had the kind of economic crash which the country has since suffered. Last year in the debate on the Finance Bill the Minister brought forward new tax expenditure schemes relating to tax reliefs for certain kinds of actions. At the time, the Dáil accepted an amendment in the name of the Labour Party to provide that one month after the publication of the Finance Bill, a cost-benefit analysis on tax expenditures would be published. The report was published.

I cannot see why the Minister would not agree, in a spirit of bipartisanship, to committing to a cost-benefit analysis. We have a number of schemes in the Finance Bill today, particularly a series of schemes which change the rules in various ways with regard to companies spending money for business expansion. The old business expansion scheme is being transformed into a new scheme with higher investment capacity which is focused on employment and innovation. Where tax incentives are used, they should be for stimulating employment, growth and innovation with the goals of long-term employment and job creation. However, unless we have a detailed table showing the implications of each new scheme, it is impossible to determine what will be the relevant scheme's ultimate effects.

As the Minister will be aware, the amendment to the Bill regarding changes in the business expansion scheme runs to tens of pages. It is probable that only professional tax consultants and lawyers are able to fully understand it. This is the democratic gap that arises with such schemes. To be incorporated into law, they must be the subject of immensely detailed technical legislation, the detail of which most parliamentarians are not equipped to understand. For this reason, parliamentarians and members of the public require a summary explanation of the costs, benefits, employment creation and innovation support that changes in a scheme involve. Such information would enable us to make rational decisions on whether a scheme is worthwhile or targeted to benefit a select few.

The critical issue in the economic crisis into which this country has been brought is that we have hollowed out our tax system through the introduction of a range of tax breaks and expenditures. While tax breaks and expenditures have a role in stimulating employment, investment and growth, we are buying a pig in a poke when we allow the Dáil to pass into law tax breaks and expenditures which, as we know from recent history, end up being used and abused to feed a construction bubble. It was this approach, combined with the crazy behaviour of bankers and their associates, that brought the economy crashing down.

If we are to learn any lessons from what went wrong and try to avoid it being repeated in the future, we need a simple explanation of tax reliefs and schemes setting out their costs, benefits and duration and indicating who is likely to utilise them. We specifically want information indicating whether a scheme will enable someone with an income in excess of €1 million to avoid paying tax when ordinary taxpayers are contributing at such a heavy rate, as they will have discovered when they opened their wage packets this month. This is what the amendment boils down to.

We saw from annual Revenue reports published in recent years that many people on incomes of more than €2 million per annum ended up with a tax rate of less than 20% because they were able to use tax shelters to shield their income in a manner that is not available to other taxpayers. If we are to emerge from the current economic morass, we must have a tax system which taxes moderately and fairly and under which everyone makes a contribution. The problem with tax shelters is that they have been used and abused by the Fianna Fáil Party to provide tax reliefs to people close to the party who are involved in the construction, development and financial services industries. The beneficiaries may lobby for and laud such reliefs but they have hollowed out our tax system and, as a consequence, ordinary people must make a much heavier tax contribution.

The Minister agreed to this simple amendment last year. On the final day of the 30th Dáil and in a spirit of bipartisanship, besides apologising, I want the Fianna Fáil Party do the right thing for once in the interests of economic recovery and repairing a society that has been broken by its mismanagement of the economy over 13 long years. That is my net point.

I heard the new leader of the Fianna Fáil Party being contrite in a generalised way about the actions of the party that has ruined the country and economy. While this is helpful for moving on, contrition is also being offered by way of this simple amendment proposing the publication of cost-benefit analyses. If Fianna Fáil and its new leader are contrite, they have an opportunity to show contrition simply and at no cost by accepting the amendment. It involves nothing more than the publication of clear cost-benefit analyses of various schemes. The party's position will tell us if the words of Deputy Martin yesterday were just talk or whether there is, to use the old phrase, a firm purpose of amendment in the approach he outlined yesterday. I commend the amendment to the House.

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