Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State has responded by saying there is nothing to see here, there are no tax loopholes and there is no need for us to have a study. We are talking here about things that were set up to be, and are, tax breaks and tax loopholes. It is not an accident that Ireland has the 15th largest international financial sector in the world. We are talking about Panama on the Liffey. The idea is that there are no bad consequences here from the point of view of society. The suggestion is that it is okay and no harm is being done as long as we get the money in, even if there are no jobs or taxes associated with it. We are seeing what Nick Shaxson has described as the "finance curse", where an outsized finance sector dominates and distorts the economy and distorts society. That is what exists in this country. It is just like the oil or resource curse in other countries, with the symptoms including greater corruption, steeper inequality, more repressive government and greater poverty. Ireland ticks all of the boxes. The dominance of finance capital is a symbol of a stagnating global economy. There is no investment in production because capitalists have so little confidence in future demand. Instead, capitalists are looking for ways to gamble money while paying as little tax as possible. Successive Irish Governments have sought to facilitate that through the alphabet soup of special purpose vehicles like ICAVs, REITs and all the rest of them. This gets to the heart of a failed and a failing Government economic strategy. This is what it means when it talks about industrial policy, which is no industrial policy whatsoever. It is a shame that the Government will not even agree to a study in order that we can see the amounts of money we are talking about.

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