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

Yes but in a lot of societies and, to my mind, the more progressive societies, the idea that anybody individually owned an idea was considered nonsensical, and it is nonsensical because ideas are generated by society. People often claim the credit for them or they have the machinery to take out patents on them before anybody else and so they claim they own the idea. Now, we are proposing that such people will not have to pay any tax on the enormous profits they generate from supposedly their ideas. As I said, ideas are generated out of societies collectively.

I am against this proposal. I reiterate that every tax break given to for-profit entities reduces the amount of revenue the State has to put into the universities. I am for innovation, very much for it. Our universities are starved of money. That is where the money needs to go. All we are doing is making things more difficult for our universities. Grants for postgraduates were cut and have still not been restored. These are the people who come up with ideas but we cut their grants and increased their fees. Funding for many of our third level institutions has been cut over the last eight or nine years. If we continue to give away billions of euro every year via tax loopholes to these companies we will have less money to put into the universities that could actually champion real innovation and socially useful innovation. What is a socially useful innovation? For a private company the criteria in terms of an innovation is will it make money and not will it benefit society?

This is our money that is being used to provide tax breaks. Do we want these resources to be given primarily to people who are pursuing profit or we would rather them go into public institutions that have some semblance of what is in the best interests of society as a whole, be that in relation to the development of renewable energies, new technologies or strategic industries that will benefit society? It should be the latter yet they are being starved.

We are joining in the race to the bottom. It makes me weep. We have been warning - the Minister of State, Deputy Halligan, was with us on this for many years - that Ireland is leading the race to the bottom in terms of corporate taxation, not in terms of the 12.5% rate but the average 6% rate that companies actually pay. Interestingly, the same percentage is chosen for the beneficiaries of the knowledge development box. As we know, a combination of small and medium enterprise are paying 12.5% as against the big profitable corporations who are paying 2%, 1% or even less than that. In some cases, they are paying less than 1%. We led and continue to lead that race to the bottom, but we are now being out-flanked by the maniac Trump who wants to reduce it even further and by Prime Minister, Theresa May. In the North, Sinn Féin and the DUP have jumped into this space, with Sinn Féin calling for a 12.5% rate in the North and the DUP calling for a 10% rate.

Where does it end? Every time we give away money like this there is less investment available for the universities, public infrastructure, public services and so on. It is madness. We are handing over control of science, innovation and the economy and, increasingly society, to a tiny group of multinational corporations who are ingenuous at making money and avoiding tax.

They are robbing other people's ideas and making money out of them. Moreover, they want to take over our universities and hold them hostage. Increasingly, they can because underfunded universities that do not get enough funding from the public have to go cap in hand to the private corporations begging for some money for research. The companies say they can give it as long as the research benefits them. That is what is going on. There is a creeping corporate takeover of our third level institutions. Some buildings in the third level institutions are named after billionaires in this country who in many cases became billionaires through aggressive tax avoidance. There are buildings named after Michael Smurfit, Anthony O'Reilly, Denis O'Brien and so on. Is this really what we want? It is certainly not what I want. I do not believe it is the basis of a sustainable economy. Responsibility for the sort of technological advancement and investment in science that we want is being handed over to people who see only dollar signs or euro signs. I absolutely believe we should reject this.

We oppose this, full stop. It is part of the race to the bottom. Even in its own terms, which I have said we reject, how can the Government stop the big companies setting up small front companies and exploiting the system? I do not believe it will be able to.

What does the Government mean when it says €7 million and €50 million are small sums? I could count on one hand — or probably on one finger in my constituency — the number of small enterprises that have an income of €7 million or €50 million in global profits. That is not small. Therefore, there is a sleight of hand. It will benefit the same old gang, who are already ripping us off to an astronomical level.

I do my best to ring the alarm bells about this stuff. This is an important debate. It will probably be ignored in the media narrative. These are very serious issues that need to be discussed. I do my best to ring a few alarm bells. We will see how that pans out.

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