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

I pay tribute to the officials who have had to wade through the tax codes while preparing the Bill. This is my first time to study the tax codes but from what I understand of them they cross-reference legislation all over the place. It is an impressive achievement for anyone to apprehend this level of detail.

As regards the substance of the Finance Bill, most of it is irrelevant to the situation the country currently faces. The framework in which this Bill has been prepared results from the decision to allow the EU, IMF and ECB to determine the economic and social future of our country. The interests of the bankers, bondholders and financial markets who wrecked the European economy are to be protected while the cost is imposed on working people, the unemployed and the vulnerable sectors of society. The last Government signed up to the agreement and this Government has decided to adhere to that utterly unfair and economically suicidal approach.

Much of the Bill merely shifts the deck chairs on the Titanic. The ship is sinking because of austerity and the people are drowning. I am amazed to hear people claim that austerity is working when people are leaving the country in their tens of thousands. The only reason the unemployment figures are not higher is that of the despicable valve of forced emigration. This catastrophe has been inflicted on the economy to protect bankers and bondholders. It is beyond me how anyone can suggest the situation is getting better when the least vulnerable are suffering so appallingly.

Much of this Bill is simply decoration because policy has been already determined by the decision to pay off bondholders and adhere to this disastrous austerity strategy. In so far as it has anything of substance, it reveals that the Government has the same flawed mindset as the EU, ECB and IMF in giving further opportunities to the corporate elites who caused the mess in the first place. Even if the money is not huge compared to the overall public finances, it is nauseating that the Government is giving tax breaks to corporate high fliers on already large salaries.

Where is the incentive for public sector workers or for low and middle income workers? Why are they not given incentives? Instead, they are hatcheted while, at the same time, we have to give incentives to the corporate high flyers. What about the plan to incentivise carbon trading, which is about turning our environment into the same sort of casino into which the financial system was turned and which had such disastrous consequences, or to give further breaks in corporate tax by extending out the ridiculously low level of corporate tax to other companies that did not benefit from it and which are trading outside the EU?

It will not make much difference because the Government has signed away the country's future for austerity and bank bailouts. In so far as there is any substance, it all points in the wrong direction. Most importantly, the Government resolutely refuses to tax the wealthy in our society, who, as The Sunday Times rich list shows, got richer by €6 billion last year and have vast billions. The Government refuses to tax those people. Instead, it keeps hitting low and middle income earners and small and medium enterprises and it keeps protecting the rich. As long as it continues in that vein, there is no way out of the economic mess this country faces. I will certainly oppose the Bill.

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