Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I am a Deputy for the Cork North-Central constituency. Apple’s Irish operations are based in Hollyhill in Cork North-Central, a little over a mile from where I live. Many of my constituents work at Apple’s Hollyhill campus. If one goes around the houses in Cork North-Central, one will see the Apple logo stuck on many of the porch windows. I am a member of the Anti-Austerity Alliance, a workers’ organisation. For us, every job is precious. The 5,000 jobs in Hollyhill are vital. In my opinion, there would be no threat to the jobs at Hollyhill if the State were to refuse to appeal and, instead, went after this money. Apple will face this tax bill, irrespective of the European Union country in which it is based. Why should the company go elsewhere? Its employees in Cork are providing it with excellent work and fabulous profits.

Our society fails on many fronts. It does so in significant measure because the rich do not contribute what they should in taxes. I will give two examples of this from Cork city itself. Apple is not the only multinational in Cork which attracts workers into the city who then find it impossible to source reasonably priced accommodation or, sometimes, to source accommodation at all. Rents rocket and these workers are fleeced by landlords at a time when the State, if it had the money, could provide public housing at reasonable prices and drive down the rent rates. Apple’s plant is situated on top of a hill on Harbour View Road. There is a magnificent view overlooking the city. From there, one can see Cork University Hospital and Mercy University Hospital. Last night, the Cork Evening Echoreported that, in August alone, 716 people spent time on trolleys in those two hospitals. Does anyone believe that tax avoidance by multinational corporations is a reality separate to and not connected with the sorry state of so many of our hospitals, schools and other public services?

This is a broader debate than the Apple tax question. It is also a debate about this country’s future industrial policy. In 1934, the then newly-elected Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, said, “No longer shall our children, like our cattle, be brought up for export.” He used the question of mass emigration as a litmus test for the success or otherwise of industrial policy. From 1932 to 1958, the State tried to develop indigenous industries behind tariff walls. By the late 1950s, as the world experienced a post-war boom, Ireland stagnated with 60,000 men and women forced to leave every year for London, Liverpool, Manchester and further afield.

The protectionist policy was then ditched by Lemass and, from 1958 to this day, Ireland has been an open economy with attempts to attract foreign direct investment as a key part of its industrial strategy. Under this policy, Ireland caught the second half of the post-war boom, joined the EEC and began to modernise. However, the 1980s was a decade marked by crisis and stagnation. There was net migration of more than 200,000 of our people out of the country at that time. From 2008 to 2014 we experienced a second crisis, with net migration of more than 140,000. According to figures, released by the Central Statistics Office, nearly 500,000 of our people were actually forced to leave during the period in question, although some have returned since. Using the de Valera litmus test, this industrial policy cannot be said to have delivered. Accordingly, neither of the two industrial policies has delivered for our people. Seemingly opposite, both policies have one thing in common, namely, they are based on capitalism and the idea of for-profit economics.

In 1906, Leon Trotsky wrote a socialist masterpiece, The Permanent Revolution & Results and Prospects and, in 1910, James Connolly wrote his masterpiece, Labour in Irish History. Both publications examined the case of countries where the bourgeoisie, developing late, never carried out a bourgeois revolution, and where the ruling class attempted an industrial policy without ever making an industrial revolution of its own. The capitalist class of countries such as Ireland was not capable of developing the country’s industry or, to use the language of the Government, failed to be competitive. In 2007, gross fixed capital formation in the economy stood at €48.7 billion. By 2014, it stood at €46.2 billion. This is an abysmally low level of productive investment in the economy. The crisis is shown graphically in construction where there has been a massive failure by the private sector to invest for want of greater profit.

To tackle this problem there needs to be a break with the system of capitalism. A left Government, which would break with the profit system, would use a substantial part of the Apple money of €13 billion to €19 billion to invest in well-paid secure State jobs. The Nevin Economic Research Institute estimates that a €1 billion State stimulus can directly create between 8,000 and 12,000 jobs. At 10,000 jobs for every €1 billion, Apple’s €14 billion would equal 140,000 jobs, while €19 billion would equal 190,000 new jobs. In other words, it would be a greater figure than what currently exists in the entire multinational corporation sector after nearly 60 years of the Lemass-style policy.

A left Government would not merely create new public sector jobs and industries. Capitalism in this country has failed to develop broadband via the telecoms industry or fairness in the insurance industry. The profiteers in the construction industry have effectively gone on strike, failing to invest in the midst of the greatest housing crisis the State has ever known. The bankers made greed their god and crashed the entire economy. In reply to Deputy Martin’s jibes about socialist industrial policy, a left Government would nationalise, under workers’ control and management, telecoms, big construction, insurance, banking and other industries, namely, the decisive sectors of the economy. It would organise a democratic and socialist plan of production to do what capitalism has never done - or will ever do - that is, create for this country a real, genuine industrial base with jobs and a decent future for all of our people.

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