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

It is incredible that we do not even know how much tax is forgone through these tax breaks the Minister allows for these speculators and investment funds of various kinds. I thought I knew a thing or two until I started to delve into the world of finance as a Member of the Dáil. I am consistently amazed by the elaborate variety of mechanisms that somebody - I presume the tax lawyers representing these speculators and investors - has dreamt up. These tax lawyers then lobby the Government through the Clearing House Group to come up with these vehicles. They make a fortune out of them, and we get a dysfunctional property sector, a massive property bubble, an out-of-control rental crisis and an out-of-control housing and homelessness crisis. The Government allows it, and we do not even know how much tax is foregone through all these vehicles: ICAVs, REITs, QIFs and super-QIFs. You could not make this stuff up. The Minister cannot even tell us, under these different headings, how much tax on a year-to-year basis we do not get because we allow these tax breaks. That should be the absolute minimum of information furnished to us in this House to make any judgment whatsoever as to the merits or otherwise of these tax breaks and tax loopholes. The Minister cannot tell us, but it is big money - billions - and deals with the massive accumulation of property assets in the hands of these speculators, with all the effects it has on the country. The Minister cannot even tell us how much tax we are not getting. That is extraordinary. It is worth thinking about the extent to which the Government will go to try to get water charges from people or go after them for property tax and how they can be hauled through the coals by the Department of Social Protection if it thinks they might be doing nixers or something. However, when it comes to these speculators, when we are talking about hundreds of millions - probably billions - of tax forgone, the Minister cannot even tell us how much. It is unbelievable. Of course, this is so flipping complicated that anyone watching this debate or reading these documents will ask, "What the hell is all that gobbledygook about?" It is in that labyrinth of complexity that all this stuff is obscured so that nobody really understands what is going on while they are being ripped off on a massive scale. The term "there is one law for the rich and another for the rest of us" gains a new meaning and significance with this stuff. All we would like is a little information at the minimum. We do not think these vehicles should exist, but the Minister should at least give us a little information on the amount of money involved so we can make a judgment as to whether he is making a good call. We have already made our judgment: it is not a good call. However, the information and the facts surrounding this should at least be put before us and the wider public so we can understand what is going on and how people are being ripped off.

I had another point. It might come back to me in a minute if I get another chance to contribute.

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