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

Following on from the TTIP, we are all in favour of trade, but the issue is whether trade is properly regulated and accountable to citizens and whether the interests of citizens and the environment are protected. The critics of the TTIP point to the settlement mechanism proposed for disputes between investors and states, which means that multinational corporations can sue Governments for breaching the terms of the treaty and these matters will be arbitrated in offshore panels of lawyers bypassing domestic courts. This is a manifesto for multinationals to ram their interests down the throats of unsuspecting citizens across Europe, and the citizens of Europe will have no recourse. These supranational arbitration bodies will be dominated by the usual suspects of legal and accountancy firms that are accountable to nobody. That is why it is a serious matter of concern in terms of letting the multinationals off the leash.

George Monbiot, one of the leading critics of this measure, has brought forward proposals regarding negotiations. A question I will ask regarding the Taoiseach's discussions with the Americans is whether he is in favour of the details of the negotiations being published in order that we know his negotiating position and that of European Union on the matter of how environmental and other concerns, including about workers' rights, will be dealt with and not overridden by this supernational disputes body which will allow multinationals to sue governments and strike down legislation protecting workers. What is the Taoiseach's position on this issue?

Should there be a vote in this Parliament on every chapter, not just the full package, of any final agreement? I do not know if we will even see the agreement in this Parliament. The European Parliament has indicated that we will just see the whole package, rather than individual chapters. This will deny public representatives the opportunity to engage in proper scrutiny and the right to vote on each detail of this enormously significant deal. There should be a sunset clause in any agreement and a provision for regular review in order that if the economic benefits the Taoiseach claims will derive from the agreement do not materialise, the sunset clause will cover the issue.

There is no evidence for the claims the agreement will lead to the creation of 500,000 jobs. Rather, there is good reason to believe letting multinationals off the hook and giving them power to strike down environmental and workers' rights regulations will lead to the loss of jobs. Let us see the hard evidence on how the agreement will produce extra jobs. I do not believe for one minute that it will. Once again, it is a charter for the multinationals.

That brings me to the issue of corporation tax, the discussions the Taoiseach may have had on it and the barrage of criticism in the United States about our corporation tax rate. I do not doubt that some of the US critics of Ireland's corporation tax rate are motivated by politics, cynicism, self-interest, opportunism and so on. However, behind all of this is a substantive issue, namely, that everybody should know that Ireland is spearheading a race to the bottom in terms of corporate taxation. We have been at the vanguard in reducing the tax obligations of the most profitable entities in the world, thus encouraging a race to the bottom. As a tax system should be moral, I ask the Taoiseach for an honest answer to this question. Is it moral that the lady who cleans the toilets and the floors in multinationals such as Google or Facebook pays a higher portion of her income in tax than the shareholders of these companies? Is that moral and are we acting morally in spearheading, on an international level, a race to the bottom, where these companies will pay less and less in corporation tax, while ordinary workers are screwed to the wall? Is that not the basis of the criticism the Taoiseach is receiving in the United States because people know that is what we are doing?

I have asked the Taoiseach about this issue before, but I do so again today. While he was in the United States, speaking at a Grant Thornton conference, he said that if one had 30,000 three-bedroomed detached houses in Dublin, one would sell them in one week, thereby encouraging, as is happening, large profit driven American investors to speculate in Irish property. Is that a responsible way for the Taoiseach to talk about a crisis, a property bubble and a homelessness and housing crisis that is devastating significant sections of Irish society? Is it responsible of the Taoiseach to talk in these terms to profit driven international investors? Is he seriously suggesting the people concerned who have no interest in dealing with the homeless and housing crises in Dublin or the dire situations in which ordinary people who have been forced into accommodation for homeless persons or who, with nowhere to go, must sleep on the streets find themselves should come and solve the housing crisis? That is crazy, but is it his policy?

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