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

I propose to share time with Deputies Healy and Catherine Murphy. This Bill and the jobs plan, which will be discussed later in the week, will do virtually nothing to achieve the Government's stated objective of creating jobs, certainly not on the enormous scale needed to deal with the massive unemployment and emigration crises blighting our society. At best, this is a scattergun approach with paltry, technical, minor measures that purport to stimulate the economy but will make no difference. In so far as there is any substance to it, the legislation is utterly misguided, driven by precisely the failed ideology and doctrine that got us into this mess.

The Bill indicates that the addiction of the political establishment in this country has failed, neoliberal economic doctrines continue to be as strong as ever. That we have changed from the A team of the Irish political establishment, Fianna Fáil, to the B team, Fine Gael, has changed nothing. The policies remain the same. The context in which this Bill is published, with the Government making a song and dance about its aspirations and objectives for jobs and to stimulate the economy, is that money that could be used to stimulate the economy and create jobs is being poured into the vaults of banks, bondholders and speculators in Europe who caused the crisis, leaving us with an intolerable debt burden that is crippling the economy. This is being paid for by vicious austerity, which is causing immense suffering for the ordinary working people in this country and which is also further damaging, crippling and suffocating the economy.

I was going to say that this Bill is a classic example of whistling against the wind but it is more accurate to say it is an example of whistling in the face of a gale force storm wrecking everything in its path. It is delusional to suggest the Bill can contribute in any significant or substantial way to creating jobs. We do not want to be prophets of doom but we must face reality. How many announcements of jobs initiatives, jobs proposals and jobs plans have we had over the past year? It all sounds good and, for a day or two, maybe people think some improvement will occur. However, the facts quickly contradict these claims.

The most recent set of facts comes from the CSO for the third quarter of last year. The Government cannot blame the previous Government for that because it took place after the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Bruton, first announced his jobs initiative. In that quarter, 20,500 jobs net were lost, with 4,000 lost in the previous quarter. There was an acceleration of net job destruction in the third quarter of last year after the new Government announced the first of its job initiatives. That is indicative of the reality of its job strategy. It is failing disastrously and the Bill does nothing to change direction.

In many ways what is in this Bill is less important than what is not in it. Deputy Doherty alluded to what should be in it when he referred to the figures published by the CSO at the weekend. They showed who has paid the price for austerity in terms of increased taxes over the past year or two. It is overwhelmingly low and middle-income earners who have been slaughtered unfairly while the wealthy in our society got away almost scot free. In some cases they have done better and have been protected. This Bill does nothing to address that injustice. It is not just an injustice, it is damaging the economy because when ordinary people are crippled with the level of austerity and taxes being imposed on them, they have no money in their pockets to spend and the small businesses that Government claims to support and wants to promote suffer, go out of business and shed more jobs, and the downward spiral continues.

If we were to ask what should have been in the Bill and what is not, it would be worth starting by trying to remind ourselves what caused the current economic crisis in the first place. It is the worst economic crisis the State has ever seen and the worst across Europe since the 1920s or 1930s. Nobody could dispute what caused it: at times even the Minister has acknowledged it in the House. The economic crisis we are facing was caused by a culture of greed and speculation by financial markets, bankers and corporate elites. That culture was incentivised by obscenely high salaries, inadequate taxes on the financial sector and markets, by allowing sectors of the economy as important as banking to become casinos where profit was the only god and property-based tax incentives in this country.

One would think if that was the reason we had a crisis we would want to change all those things, end the culture of obscenely high salaries for corporate executives and impose higher taxes on the financial markets in order to rein them in, control them and ensure some benefit was derived for the economy. One would want to make sure new sectors of the economy were not turned into casinos the way the banking sector was and do away with the property-based tax incentives that might fuel another bubble like that which ruined this economy.

However, the Minister is doing the exact opposite. His answer to the economic crisis is to give more incentives and tax breaks to corporate high-fliers and executives earning obscenely high salaries. He is giving more tax breaks to multinational companies to lure in what is essentially tax piracy. Losses made elsewhere can be declared by multinationals in Ireland and written off against tax. Companies will pay less tax here and the 12.5% corporate tax rate extends to dividends made outside Europe. It is bad enough that we have low corporate taxes here but the Minister now wants to give more tax breaks to multinationals.

He wants to turn carbon trading, which is supposed to be about safeguarding our environment, into a casino and provide incentives like those provided to the banking sector by the previous Government. He wants self-assessment of all tax by 2013, which is a recipe for more tax avoidance. I cannot believe it. Meanwhile, he increased VAT on goods, services and small businesses, the very sector he is supposed to be helping, by 2% which will do further damage to struggling domestic sector.

It is more of the same. It is about protecting, incentivising and rewarding the rich while attacking the poor. It continues injustice and the downward economic spiral. The Minister should stop it.

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