Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim comhghairdeas leis an Leas-Cheann Comhairle faoin jab úr atá aige.

I commend to the House the Private Members' motion tabled by the Social Democrats and I broadly support it as does my party. I take this opportunity to speak about an issue that was already touched on by Deputy Donnelly regarding how charities are being used, or indeed abused, by special purpose vehicles. The Deputy did not mention the fact that I have already reported this to he regulator. A freedom of information request I got a number of weeks ago unearthed the fact that both the Revenue Commissioners and the Department of Finance officials are concerned about this and with respect to how the regulator is not dealing with this issue. Deputy Donnelly did not say that the article by Mark Paul, which he referenced, was on the foot of that freedom of information request, information that I provided to the journalist, although he and a number of other journalists, including Joe Brennan and Mark Tighe, have been doing a great deal of work on this area.

It is far too easy to bat down accusations and I want to point out that charitable status is not about a tax structure or trying to evade paying tax, as Deputy Donnelly suggested. Section 110 companies, which this Oireachtas allows for, are tax neutral. They are abused all the time. Those companies, which have been rightly suggested in terms of buying up debt, are not paying tax. The figures that have been presented such as €250 and small amounts of corporation tax are accurate and they are all on the record for everybody to see. The reason that is happening is because they are section 110 companies and that is something the Revenue Commissioners and the Department of Finance are starting to investigate, as we can see from that freedom of information request.

The question Deputy Donnelly asked is still relevant regarding why these special purpose vehicles are being captured under a charitable trust. The reason they are under the charitable trust is to obscure the activities within the special purpose vehicle and, most importantly, it is to have the accounts not associated with the main company. When one has it under a charitable trust, one does not need to have consolidated accounts. This is what it is all about. Those special purpose vehicles are raising debt. When one looks at the accounts of a company the company appears to be in a very healthy state but it has all those special purpose vehicles which do not factor in its consolidated accounts and they have huge amounts of debt and no tax is paid on the investments they have made. This is of so much concern that the Central Bank last year started to advise every special purpose vehicle in Ireland that they need to tell it what is going on regarding their accounts. Figures on that are due to be published soon.

Why are the Revenue Commissioners and the Department of Finance officials raising issues regarding this structure? They are raising them because this is not what charities are supposed to do. This charitable structure in terms of Matheson, which is only one of them as there are many others, holds €6.1 billion of assets and has two employees working for it, but it allows a clear conflict of interest between the directors of that charitable trust who are the directors of Matheson, who then advise on the setting up of the special purpose vehicles. There is a complete conflict interest that the charities regulator needs to deal with regardless of whether that will involve a change of law. Are these the type of vehicles we want to see designated as charities? Is this the type of use of charity laws we want where we allow these vehicles which are basically only set up to keep those special purpose vehicles off their parent company accounts? I argue it is not.

The Minister's argument that we have strengthened our white collar crime laws is laughable on the day on which Denis O'Brien lost his case.

The only case taken in relation to the Moriarty tribunal was that he did not get due process or fair hearings and he lost that today in the Supreme Court. The fact that none of the players in regard to the Moriarty tribunal has gone before a jury shows absolutely that we do not have robust white collar crime laws. We have all censured the players and the particular Deputy involved in the House. The Moriarty tribunal has reported and set out what went on with the limited information it had. Yet, none of them has come before an Irish court because our white collar crime laws are not robust enough. It is about time the House got its act together and dealt with this.

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