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

One has got to admire Fine Gael for its consistency in championing the interests of the landlords and developers and for protecting the interests of corporations. Its ability to do this on a consistent and ongoing basis is truly staggering. It is even more staggering considering that policies of giving tax breaks and incentives to landlords and developers precipitated the greatest economic crisis this State has ever seen. Here we are again, and the party is up to the same tricks and employing the same misguided, dangerous economic policies that precipitated the crisis in the first place. I do not believe my saying this is in any way rhetorical or an exaggeration; in fact, I do not believe one could exaggerate the extent of the stupidity of these policies and the sort of political amnesia required to pursue them given what happened to this country. It is really quite staggering in its proportions.

In broad terms, it is absolutely accurate to state the budget gave crumbs to working people and a bonanza to developers and landlords. The famous fiscal space of €1.2 billion was divided up such that it left but crumbs for the majority of ordinary people and for the public services that desperately need a considerable boost in investment and funding. In so far as some of that money was divided up across Departments and used for the miserable little tax break on the universal social charge, all the services and ordinary workers got were crumbs. The biggest winners, by a very long margin, were the developers and landlords.

When I go through the detail of the Finance Bill and link it to the budget as a whole, I estimate that at least €0.5 billion, or more, of the overall fiscal space was given to landlords and developers. Not all of it is in this Finance Bill. Quite a lot of it is on the expenditure side. Between the jigs and reels pertaining to tax and expenditure, however, the landlords and developers had a bonanza. There is broad evidence to confirm that. Some €110 million was provided to private landlords in the form of the housing assistance payment scheme, and €137 million was provided in the form of the rental allowance scheme. Some €200 million was provided in infrastructure grants to private developers for building private, for-profit housing. Of course, €50 million was provided through the help-to-buy scheme, as referred to in this Bill. In addition, the interest deductibility section involves another handout to the landlords. The tax break for renting rooms is another tax break for landlords. We will proceed to discuss the other aspects. In broad terms, all the incentives referred to amount to in excess of €0.5 billion for landlords and developers. This is shocking.

Contrast that with what workers got through the miserable 0.5% reduction in the universal social charge burden. This means that someone earning €19,000 gets €1.92 more per week, which is not even the price of a cup of coffee. That is what the lowest-paid workers got. Someone earning €30,000, a little below the average, gets an additional €2.94 per week. These are the crumbs that were given to workers, although €0.5 billion, or more, was given in subsidies, grants and tax breaks to the landlords and developers. It is truly shocking.

Aside from what was given and how the fiscal space was divvied up, the other big story of this Finance Bill, the budget generally and successive budgets is the manner in which Fine Gael has fought relentlessly to protect the most profitable corporations in this country, which are mostly multinationals, to isolate them from having to pay their fair share of tax. According to EUROSTAT, living standards in this country are 15% below the European average. They dropped by 10% during the period of austerity. It should not be a surprise that, according to EUROSTAT, our living standards are on par with those of Greece, Portugal and Spain, all the countries that got absolutely crucified during the austerity imposed by the fiscal boot boys or austerity boot boys of the troika. During the very same period, profits of the corporations have gone through the roof. Apart from a brief dip in 2008 itself, profits have consistently risen, jumping an incredible 44% between 2014 and 2015. National household wealth, net wealth after debts are stripped out, has jumped by approximately €100 billion since 2012 but ordinary people's living standards have been slaughtered, dropping by a full 40%.

The statistics and evidence are absolutely clear. Consider what has happened under Fine Gael and the Labour Party. I shall refer to some of the really ironic comments I heard from Deputy Joan Burton earlier on the need for an effective corporation tax rate, which apparently she is now proposing. This is a Labour Party proposal. I actually had to rub my ears when I heard Deputy Burton say that earlier.

Strangely enough, we have been proposing in every single budget for the last five years that we impose a minimum effective corporation tax rate and just make corporations pay the 12.5%. The wealthiest multinationals pay on average about 6%. The vulture funds pay less than 1%. We said this to Deputies Joan Burton and Brendan Howlin and the former Deputy, Eamon Gilmore, for the last five or six years, but they absolutely stonewalled us, accused us of engaging in fantasy politics and told us this was nonsense and that there was no money. "There is no pot of gold" was the famous expression. Now, suddenly, in opposition, Deputy Joan Burton apparently has discovered that we should have a minimum effective corporation tax rate and, incredibly, is even credited with making this suggestion in recent media coverage. I remind people that we have been arguing trenchantly for this for five years, saying we need to consider the effective rate. This has been against the stonewalling of the Department of Finance, which recycled the nonsense we got from the Government that our effective corporation tax rate - how many different figures did we have? - hovered around 11.9% or was 10%-odd when it absolutely was not, a fact exposed by the European Commission in the case of Apple. God knows what else will come out when the European Commission investigates several other companies that have engaged in billions worth of such tax avoidance with the collusion of successive Governments led by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. No serious moves are being made to do anything about this when they could be made easily. In any case, 12.5% is a miserable rate of tax, far below what ordinary workers must pay, but there is no move to do anything about it. All the Government has to do is impose the 12.5% on the top line figure of corporations' profits before deductions and allowances are accounted for.

Regarding the distribution statistics, I could not get the 2014 figures because I cannot work the Revenue website at all, but the statistics for 2011 show a total of €39 billion of deductions and allowances each year, which have probably shot up considerably since then. That is €39 billion worth of tax loopholes. Those are the vulture funds. That is Apple, Facebook, LinkedIn and God knows what else syphoning billions and billions out of the tax system with the collusion of successive Governments and the Department of Finance telling us again and again that the corporations are paying an effective rate. The Department is playing accounting games and engaging in trickery with public representatives trying to get to the bottom of what is a massive, obscene tax evasion scandal in this tax haven that is Ireland. Then we get a budget that just carries on with more of this stuff.

Interest deductibility has not been commented on much. Comments have already been made about the help-to-buy scheme. I repeat that already, within days of the announcement of the rent-to-buy scheme, property developers have increased prices by €30,000 and €40,000. TheJournal.iedid a very good report showing that a particular developer, Kingscroft Properties in Delgany, has raised the price of a three-bedroom semi-detached house from €395,000 to €427,000, and a five-bedroom detached house from €575,000 to €620,000 since the budget. That is what is happening: an absolute boon to developers and, in the case of landlords, this interest deductibility. People really need to know this stuff. Ordinary people cannot go into banks and ask to borrow €10 million to buy an estate. They would be told to take a hike. They cannot even get mortgages. However, a rich person with millions who wants to invest in, speculate on and profiteer from property can go into a bank and borrow €10 million or €15 million, buy an estate or whatever and then get a tax break on 75% of the annual interest payments on that loan which will give him or her massive profits, whether the estate bought is sold or rented. Before this budget, the figure was 75%. It is now proposed to ramp it up so that 80% of the interest repayment can be tax-deductible, and that will go to 100%. This is just a license for the greedy developers and speculators to profiteer on a massive scale and pay literally not a cent of tax. It is unbelievable. Meanwhile, ordinary people are hammered.

The special assignee relief programme, SARP, tax break has been maintained for high-flying executives to pay less tax because apparently we need them so much to come here and teach us how to engage in tax evasion. That is what we are doing. We are giving them a tax break so they can come over here and engage in massive tax evasion in this country. It is unbelievable.

Brexit and its impact were mentioned. I will finish on this point. Why is Brexit negatively impacting on the Irish economy? It is because of currency speculation. It is the speculators who are affecting the value of the British currency, which is negatively impacting on our economy. Would any Government, seeing this, not want to do something about currency speculation and speculation generally? Would it not therefore enthusiastically support the proposal for a financial transactions tax to impose at least some tax and some disincentive on these speculators? No. We fight trenchantly against the financial transactions tax to facilitate more of these people coming to the IFSC so they can use Ireland as a hub to engage in speculation all across Europe and all across the world, destabilising economies. You could not make this stuff up. There is much more detail to go through on Committee Stage, but this is shocking. It is dangerous, unfair and unjust, and there is no vision for a fairer distribution of wealth and income in this country. Quite the opposite: it is more about concentrating the wealth in the hands of the greediest minority, which has banjaxed this economy over recent years.

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