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

I move amendment No. 5:

To delete all words after “Dáil Éireann:” and substitute the following:“condemns the Government decision to appeal the European Commission’s ruling that Ireland provided unlawful State aid to Apple and calls for the appeal to be dropped immediately;

calls on the Government to:

— waive confidentiality and seek to publish the European Commission ruling; and

— develop a plan to invest the money owed to the Irish State in resolving the social crises in housing, health and education and to form part of a major programme of public investment, including in the green energy and technology sectors, creating tens of thousands of decent jobs;

notes that:

— contrary to Government suggestions, the so-called ‘double-Irish’ tax avoidance mechanism utilised by Apple has not been abolished, but rather is being phased out and is therefore still available to Apple and other multi-national corporations to avoid paying billions of euro every year in Corporation Tax; and

— it is almost certain that other multi-national corporations utilised the same tax avoidance mechanism as that used by Apple over the same period and that therefore the €13 billion figure identified in relation to Apple is likely to be only a fraction of the full amount of Corporation Tax owed by all offending companies over that period;

condemns the functioning of Ireland as a tax haven as part of a model of ‘tax competition’ pursued by successive Governments;

calls for:

— an end to the continuing use of section 110 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 by corporations to avoid their tax liability and the abolition of any other Corporation Tax incentives or loopholes being utilised by large corporations, vulture funds and real estate investment trusts; and

— the immediate abolition of the ‘double-Irish’ and the application of the full Corporation Tax take on all companies incorporated in Ireland;

further notes:

— that ‘tax competition’ and the operation of ‘tax havens’ to facilitate major corporations avoiding tax has negative impacts worldwide in terms of reduced expenditure on public services and extra taxation burden on working people and the operation of a ‘race to the bottom’ in terms of wages, conditions, regulation and Corporation Tax, with ‘developing countries’ losing $100 billion a year according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development; and

— the failure of an industrial policy based on ‘tax competition’, reliance on foreign direct investment, the domestic private sector and the capitalist market to develop an indigenous manufacturing base in Ireland;

further calls for:

— a substantial increase in the effective Corporation Tax rate to fund an increase in expenditure on health, education and housing;

— an immediate investigation into the tax affairs of all other companies that may have avoided paying the full Corporation Tax rate using the same or similar mechanisms as that used by Apple and the recovery of all such unpaid tax; and

— a radical change to put people’s needs before profits with the development of a socialist industrial policy, based on public investment and public ownership under democratic control of the key sectors of the economy, to enable planning for economically and environmentally sustainable growth.”

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