Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

Our proposal is simple and does not relate to private residences, it is limited to assets worth more than €1 million and not to farm assets worth less than €5 million. As I pointed out to the Minister, the financial assets make up approximately one half of the figure of €131 billion to which I referred and the figure is rising. These assets have risen significantly in recent years. The money is there and there is a pot of gold despite the Minister's denial of its existence. However, the Minister will not go after it because he invited those who have the pot of gold and who live as tax exiles to advise the country on how to get out of the economic crisis at the global forum on economic recovery. That says it all. The Government is willing to slaughter the people at the bottom and continues to adulate the tax exiles and billionaires, who became billionaires through dubious circumstances. Let us put it no stronger than that. Why not take the measures that the United States, hardly a haven of revolutionary socialism, has taken in terms of tax exiles? Serious measures were put in place there. Why does the Minister not consider what the United States has done in terms of tax exiles and provide for emergency legislation to recoup some of their money?

I propose a cap on public sector pay of €100,000 to include executives, chief executives and politicians; a cap on public sector pensions of €50,000; that the Government should go after the tax exiles and provide the necessary emergency legislation to do so; and the imposition of a super levy on the super wealthy. I believe such a measure should be ongoing but in the context of the current economic crisis could we not demand such a super levy? Dare I mention the sacred cow of corporation tax? Could we not tax profitable multinationals or such firms as Tesco on an emergency basis? Should they not be asked to make an emergency contribution to the country's economic plight? Would such firms really run away if we put in place a levy for a few years on their vast profits which run into ten of millions and billions of euro? These are measures the Government could take if it were serious but, naturally, it is not serious and the real business will be done to ordinary people on Tuesday.

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