Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on this Bill, which I find to be a deeply depressing reflection of the thinking, not so much of the Government but of the Department of Finance and those who dictate their thought to them from elsewhere. It is a sort of monument to financial orthodoxy and it possibly is the most conservative Finance Bill of the past 30 or 40 years. It is completely lacking in imagination or vision and certainly reflects a conservative way of thinking that does not reflect the sense of urgency or vision that might be included in such a measure.

My problem with it is it simply comes back to all the same sources for income and revenue and looks little further than that. There was an opportunity in the budget and this Finance Bill to embark upon a new model. There was an opportunity to tell the troika the Government acknowledges it must reduce a certain amount of revenue to bridge the budget deficit and that there is a problem in this regard. At the same time, however, the Government could seek to be allowed to do what it likes within those parameters and available projections. Anyone who has met representatives of the troika, as virtually every Member of this House now appears to have done, seems to get a different interpretation from what they say and what the Government says. When it is politically convenient, the Government blames the troika for the thinking and measures behind the budget. However, the troika states the Government can do what it likes, as long as the figures at the end pretty roughly measure up. Moreover, they do pretty roughly measure up and I do not dispute that. However, the measures are those of financial orthodoxy.

I have been listening for a long time to my colleagues on this side of the House from the left and while I do not agree with much of what they say, I find it far more challenging and in some cases more convincing to listen to Deputies Higgins and Boyd Barrett then I do to listen to Mr. John Moran of the Department of Finance. I think the aforementioned Deputies are wrong about their sums but at least they are trying to portray a new model and a new way of doing things, not within those same parameters. I listen to Deputy Boyd Barrett from time to time when he talks about multinationals and advocates something I do not believe makes financial sense in the long run. He suggests there is a great pot of gold out there among the multinationals because they are not paying tax at the right rates. He believes one will get billions more for the Exchequer if one taxes them that much more, which will gradually bridge the gap. While I do not agree with him, he has put his finger on a quite interesting point, which is there is great potential in these multinationals which, after all, are a kind of political grey area here because people treat them rather tenderly. They encourage them in some ways and then go and batter them on the head in others. My contention is they should be nurtured and encouraged. I do not know whether anyone in the Chamber remembers the budget introduced some years ago by a Fianna Fáil Government in which it actually reduced capital gains tax with the result that revenue rocketed. I suggest the Government should think a little outside the box and, to reiterate a point I have made previously, it should consider reducing the rate of corporation tax because personally, I believe it would bring in more of the big-ticket items we so badly need. Whatever people feel ideologically about multinationals, they do certain things here. The Americans on their own have brought in more than 100,000 jobs and on top of that, they bring in enormous spin-off activity in the economy. I do not care as much as others obviously do whether they are paying 0%, 12.5% or 33%. At present, the more of them the better because they will produce more jobs and will produce activity in the community, which is so important and is what is needed. However, the Government appears to have absolutely no jobs policy whatsoever. One cannot really have a jobs policy if one is doing what the mandarins and the troika tell one to do.

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