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

I thank Deputy Durkan. I appreciate the vote of confidence. It might lead him to support the amendment.

I am glad the Government has agreed to introduce country by country reporting. Those who are fighting for tax reform in the area of corporate tax to try to clamp down on aggressive tax avoidance strategies of multinationals have long argued that country by country reporting is key to beginning to close these aggressive tax avoidance practices. However, they have always said that that reporting, which the Government has accepted has to happen, should be public, and it seems the Government is not willing to accept this and it is what our amendment is trying to press.

We have spent the last few hours discussing just how complicated the tax avoidance strategies in a number of areas are, in property in terms of speculators and people investing in property, and that is equally true of the tax avoidance strategies of these multinationals. They have very well paid tax specialists who are working all the time to figure out ways to minimise their tax bill. Therefore, simply having reports given to Revenue but which cannot be viewed by the public and by Members is not good enough. These things need to be available for the public to see and for Deputies to see, analyse and judge as to whether these corporations are properly tax compliant and paying the taxes they should on their enormous profits. I see no reason why the Minister would not accept the amendment. People like Richard Murphy who has spearheaded the campaign for country by country reporting, which has finally been taken on board by governments, has always said it has to be public and that is true.

The Minister should accept this. It would make the transparency we need to have tax justice and tax reform a reality. I commend the amendment and hope the Minister will consider accepting it.

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