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

There is a notion of legitimate tax competition underpinning the Government's view. I ask the Minister and anybody who is open-minded on this to consider the following question. How is it that in the 1950s, 1960s and right up to the 1970s, we could afford the likes of social housing while in Britain they could afford the National Health Service? We had expansion of a public health system and we were able to invest in all sorts of areas of infrastructure to expand public services but now we cannot afford such things, apparently, as there is no money even to build the amount of social housing we could at that time. We do not have the money for infrastructure now but we had it then, when we were poorer.

The level of corporate taxation has dropped from approximately 50% then to negligible levels now and something gives when there is such competition and a race to the bottom. We go from where corporations pay 50% tax on profits to 4.7% on those profits now. As a result, we do not have the money for social housing, infrastructure, education and everything we need to sustain a decent society and a proper infrastructure for that society. That is the consequence of the race to the bottom that the Government has spearheaded and we want to move in the opposite direction.

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