Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

I will vote against the Government's proposals on this issue. Mr. Martin Shanahan, the chief executive officer of IDA Ireland, stated in a recent radio interview that the ruling "does not call into question Ireland's tax regime and does not call into question Ireland's 12.5% tax rate". The European Commissioner, Mr. Phil Hogan, subsequently agreed with Mr. Shanahan. Both Mr. Hogan and Mr. Shanahan are correct that the Commission's ruling does not affect Ireland's corporation tax rate or sole competency to set that rate. Why then is the Government, by which I mean the Fine Gael Party, the Independents supporting Enda or "Endapendents", Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party, stressing its militant opposition to any change in the 12.5% corporate tax rate? This fake militancy is in total contrast to the grovelling support shown by these parties for the bailout and fiscal treaty, which fly in the face of the 1916 Proclamation and Irish sovereignty.

Sweetheart deals and allowing corporate entities to avoid paying their fair share of tax have serious consequences for ordinary people. We have, for instance, a serious housing emergency, with more than 100,000 families on housing waiting lists, and a growing homelessness problem, with 2,000 children living in emergency accommodation. Families continue to be evicted from their homes by banks owned by the State. Hundreds of thousands of people are on hospital waiting lists and chaos prevails in hospital emergency departments. Home help services, home care packages and education are being cut and the list goes on. Low and middle income families are also being fleeced by the universal social charge, house tax, inheritance tax, VAT, student fees and the water tax.

Fine Gael, the "Endapendents", Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party are betraying the Irish people by refusing to accept €13 billion with interest from the €228 billion which Apple has resting in subsidiaries with no tax residence. The same politicians meekly gave €64 billion of citizens' money to large international investors who gambled on Irish bank bonds. They now want to give back the guts of €19 billion to one of the largest companies in the world.

We heard a great deal in this debate about the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, and base erosion and profit sharing, BEPS, a concept to which the Minister referred and which is referred to in many, if not all, of the amendments to the motion. BEPS, it seems, will be our saviour. Nothing could be further from the truth, however, because if the current proposals are implemented, Ireland's position will worsen as corporations will pay each country tax on the profits they make from sales of their products in that country. As sales in Ireland account for only a tiny fraction of worldwide sales, corporation tax revenue will come under serious threat from these proposals. While the 12.5% rate will not change, it will apply to a much smaller share of profits, which will have serious implications for employment here. Many countries, including the United Kingdom, have announced reductions in their corporation tax rates in a race to the bottom. For this reason, the fake militancy of supporters of this motion is a smokescreen to cover up the effects of their current policies and the economic development policies they pursued over decades, including, above all, the ceding of all effective economic sovereignty to the European Union and multinational companies.

Ireland's ability to respond to this serious threat has been weakened by the privatisation of various companies, including Eircom and Aer Lingus. The Finnish Government, through a nationalised wood company, created thousands of jobs in an indigenous company, Nokia. We must do likewise by creating tens of thousands of jobs in indigenous industries in the high-tech, energy and agricultural sectors, as well as in public works programmes. Above all, we must recover our sovereignty to allow us to cope with future developments. Italy, France and Spain flout the fiscal treaty when it suits them and we must do likewise.

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