Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach is as adept as his second last predecessor at muddying the waters and losing the essential in a ball of cotton wool when he tries to justify the unjustifiable.

To equate the IFSC Clearing House Group and its influence with a Deputy raising in the House an issue pertaining to some constituent or vulnerable group in society is derisory. Any reading of the minutes of the IFSC Clearing House Group shows one immediately that the group is a "who's who" of the main players in the financial markets in this State and further afield. I refer to the banks, financial institutions, powerful multinational corporations and the legal and financial consultancy groups that advise the powerful financial institutions, particularly on persistent and consistent tax avoidance in this State, to the detriment of our people. They have ready access to the most senior representatives of the Government in the Taoiseach's Department and in the Department of Finance.

This means that those whose speculation caused the disastrous crash in the State have had and continue to have permanent access to the most powerful institutions in the State to advance their own interests. The IFSC Clearing House Group is not a clearer but simply an institutionalised, gold-plated lobbying facility for the most powerful, private and profit-seeking financial institutions. It gives them unprecedented access. We know the group writes and presents legislation. It is then duly and obediently put into some of the finance Acts to provide for its members' interests.

Is it any wonder the Taoiseach, and Deputy Martin and his colleagues when they were in government, would come into the House and claim they would lay down their lives in the trenches in arguing there should not be a cent extra in corporation tax on the financial institutions in question? Is the hold the institutions have over the right-wing political parties who form the Government not clear? Does the Taoiseach not agree this is capitalist corporatism at its most blatant? Does it not show that, under the domination of Fine Gael and Labour, and under Fianna Fáil and the Green Party before them, democracy is perverted?

Contrast the circumstances with those in other sectors of society. One should consider the unfortunate victims of Priory Hall who lost their homes due to rogue developers who are entertained by some of the institutions that are prominent in the IFSC Clearing House Group. The individuals had to beat down the walls of government to get talking to the Taoiseach. Can the unemployed walk into the heart of Government Buildings and have immediate access to the Taoiseach and write laws for urgent job creation measures? The answer shows the disparity that exists. This institution works in such a way that it serves as a distortion and perversion of any concept of real democracy. It is indefensible.

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