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

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for selecting this issue for debate. I also appreciate that the Minister has come into the Chamber to participate. Between the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, GSOC, and the Garda whistleblowers, this week may well go down in history as one in which attempts to cover up scandals were exposed. I certainly believe that what has been going on regarding the issue of Ireland's corporate tax rate and the real amount of tax that large corporations are paying amounts to a cover-up. This has been reinforced by the paper produced by Professor James Stewart of Trinity College within the past week, which suggested the real corporate tax rate being paid by large and hugely profitable firms is nowhere near the 12.5% headline rate or any of the rates the Minister, the Taoiseach and others regularly have claimed such companies are paying but it is a tiny fraction thereof. An astonishing figure of 2.2% is being suggested. When one recalls what Mr. Nyberg said about the banking crisis, groupthink and the lack of contrarians willing to question the consensus, nowhere has this been more apparent than in the Government's attitude to questions raised about the real corporate tax rate. Essentially, a tiny number of people, including myself, who have raised this matter over the past two years have been largely ridiculed and accused of cloud-cuckoo economics and so on, because we questioned the assertions that corporations were paying the 12.5% rate and suggested the entire issue of corporation tax should be questioned and examined thoroughly. However, an eminent professor of economics has now stated the situation is actually worse than even we had thought. I tabled a parliamentary question to the Minister and received a reply based on Revenue statistics which showed that multinationals earned €70 billion in pre-tax profits, according to the last available figures, and paid only €4 billion. This revealed an effective rate of 6.8%, rather than the aforementioned 12.5%. I thought that was bad enough, because at stake there is approximately €4 billion of potential revenue to the State. When one considers what that would do to alleviate cuts imposed on vulnerable sectors of society or what it could be used for to develop infrastructure, invest in job creation and so on, it constitutes a great deal of money. However, there appears to be an absolute dismissal of even a serious attempt to investigate and examine this issue, given the huge divergence in figures being bandied around for corporate tax. This also has been confirmed by the academic whose surname has escaped me but who is the consultant to the finance sub-committee on global corporate taxation. He has acknowledged there is a real issue in this regard and provided five different figures on what the corporate tax rate could be, including rates of 11.9%, 12.3%, 6.9% and 14.4%, to which one can add Professor Jim Stewart's figure of 2.2%. Whatever the Minister and I might think, given the billions that are at stake, does this issue not require serious investigation?

The Minister needs to give serious consideration to having a minimum effective corporation tax rate in order to clarify this matter and ensure we get a proper take from these hugely profitable corporations.

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