Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I know the Taoiseach does not have a crystal ball. None of us has a crystal ball. As we have heard, the draft national risk assessment plan covers some key areas for us. I want to draw the Taoiseach's attention to two areas that are relevant following the election of Donald Trump. There are global concerns about the President-elect's attitude to the issue of climate change in the context of the Paris Agreement. I would like the Taoiseach to tell us whether there is some means of revising the climate change assessment in the risk assessment document, which does not extend beyond the fines we might incur if we do not reach our targets. I remind him that climate change is about much more than fines. Paragraph 2.3 of the risk assessment refers to the "importance of multinational corporations to Irish economy and [the] risk of unfavourable international tax changes". I suggest that the assessment does not look at the risks associated with our fawning over multinationals, our leniency towards them, our emphasis on them and our reliance on providing them with an extremely low corporate tax regime. I believe we need to look at such factors again, in the context of Donald Trump's statement that he intends to reduce the US corporation tax rate to 15% and probably to an even lower level, to ensure they are part of our assessment of risk. We fawn over the multinationals in this country. We do our best to make sure they stay. We have lenient tax laws and workers' rights provisions. We do not tax them properly. We do not want to collect the taxes they are supposed to pay. That is why the State is appealing the Apple judgment.

In addition to Google, Apple and the big pharmaceutical companies, there are multinationals in the finance sector in this country. It is interesting to note that Donald Trump is proposing to appoint the co-founder of Cerberus, Stephen Feinberg, as one of his financial advisers. We learned this week that Cerberus paid €1,900 in tax on profits of €77 million for the sale of Project Eagle. I know the Taoiseach will argue that we have closed off the section 110 tax loophole. If we had collected the effective 12.5% rate on those profits, we would have had an additional €9.6 million in our coffers to deal with mental health, housing and all the issues that we keep saying we are strangled in dealing with because of the lack of fiscal space. It was estimated the other night during the debate on the Finance Bill that the closure of the section 110 tax loophole would probably not yield more than €50 million. That does not make sense, given that an additional €9.6 million in tax should have been paid as a result of the sale of Project Eagle. Many other vulture fund sales could bring in far more tax receipts. I would like the Taoiseach to comment on that. How will the contents of the risk assessment document relating to corporation tax changes be affected by the election of Donald Trump and the appointment of advisers like Stephen Feinberg? We all know he will say "nice one lads, we only paid €1,900 on €77 million, let's keep this going". Such people are going to look at ways of doing this for themselves in other parts of the world like the United States, thereby depriving citizens all over the world of the finance that is needed to deliver decent public services.

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