Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

This motion is useful in so far as it should dispel any notion that there is any difference of consequence between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael when it comes to being cheerleaders of the neoliberal agenda. The motion starts with a partial account of the turn taken in industrial policy under the reign of Seán Lemass. I remind Fianna Fáil Deputies that the original strategy of Lemass was not that we would end up decades later reliant on FDI to the extent we do; rather is was posited that by encouraging FDI, indigenous companies would benefit from being in closer proximity to the most advanced production techniques and somehow this would rub off and finally enable an indigenous capitalist take off that had eluded this country since the formation of the State. Even at the height of the previous boom, Ireland's indigenous manufacturing base was half the EU average.

That history has been rewritten to fit into the current situation in which we find ourselves. The lauding once again of the 12.5% headline corporation tax rate, which is supported by Fine Gael, the Labour Party and Sinn Féin, typically fails to recognise the price we pay for such a low rate. This rate also applies to indigenous companies, including the banks. The effective rate remains considerably less than 12.5% thanks both to official write-offs but also bogus patent and royalty practices that some big name companies flagrantly exploit. A total of 70% of corporations in Ireland pay zero tax according to a reply to a parliamentary question provided by the previous Minister of Finance. Google paid 0.14% in tax between 2005 and 2011; Starbucks paid an incredible €45 in 2015.

In 2010, TheNew York Timesestimated that almost a quarter of Irish GDP came from ghost multinational corporations, MNCs, declaring profits here to minimise their tax bills. Three of the top ten so-called Irish companies are multinationals re-domiciled here in a notorious form of tax avoidance known as tax inversion 31. However, it took the ludicrous 26% GDP growth figures for all of this to become headline news. Google has been booking 40% of its global revenues in Ireland; Microsoft, 25%; and Facebook, 50%. This is all supposedly the work of a supernaturally productive few thousand Irish staff. The third largest so-called Irish company, Eaton Corporation, declared profits of €19 million per Irish worker last year. This explains why multinationals pay 80% of corporation tax, and so in theory should account for 80% of so-called Irish profit, yet employ only one in ten workers.

This is a race we cannot ultimately win. Hungary’s corporation tax rate is 9% and other eastern European countries have rates as low as zero. How low do we go? There is a connection to our housing crisis, hospital waiting lists, overcrowded classrooms and school enrolment problems. Solidarity is completely opposed to the proposed Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, CETA, trade deal between the EU and Canada and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP, between the EU and US. These deals will create a race to the bottom of the Atlantic in respect of workers’ rights, environmental and consumer protections, and they will function as a charter for corporate rights. The introduction of investor state dispute settlement, ISDS, even in a modified form, would give corporations the right to sue states that interfere with their so-called right to profit. The motion twice mentions support for these agreements once consumer protection, food, health, environment and labour standards remain untouched. That is a nonsense. These are the very criteria under which TTIP would permit multinationals from outside the EU to take a member state to an ISDS hearing. It is typical Fianna Fáil trying to be all things to all people.

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