Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Tá mé sásta labhairt ar an Bhille seo anocht. Sílim go bhfuil an Bille seo lochtach mar gheall ar an dearcadh atá ag an Rialtas agus ag Fianna Fáil, atá ag tabhairt tacaíocht don Rialtas an Bille Airgeadais seo a thabhairt fríd na Tithe. Is é an dearcadh sin ná go bhfuil sé ceart agus cóir go mbeadh muid ag gearradh na céadta milliún euro i gcánacha agus géarchéim mhillteanach os ár gcomhair ó thaobh tithíochta de, agus daoine gan tithe, agus ó thaobh chúrsaí sláinte de, agus othair ina luí ar thralaithe agus othair ann nach bhfuil ábalta fáil isteach chuig na hoispidéil agus iad ar liosta feithimh fada. Sin an fáth nach mbeidh ár bpáirtí ag tabhairt tacaíocht don Bhille Airgeadais seo i mbliana.

The Finance Bill, like the budget, is deeply flawed. The fixation on personal tax cuts at a time of crisis in our public services is inexcusable. I heard Deputy Michael McGrath talk about the level of personal income tax we are paying compared with 2007 and I am not sure whether he wants us to return to the unsustainable period of 2007, the boom and bust where his party year after year supported cuts to personal taxation and drove this economy into the ground. We all know this. It is not distant memory, it is real for many families who still have loved ones in different parts of the world as a result of that party's stewardship of the economy at that time. I really fear that this Minister is doing the same again. He is doing it at the expense of public services which are crying out for investment in areas such as health and housing. It is no good coming into this Chamber and saying we want a budget that will support investment in housing and health and deciding to strip away resources worth hundreds of millions of euro with cuts to income tax and universal social charge, USC.

That USC and income tax cuts of €335 million are being made at a time when we have a housing emergency and a health service that is creaking at the seams is inexcusable. My party is opposed to this Bill as it implements a budget that is not good enough for the country in 2018. The main part of the budget as far as the Government is concerned is the cuts in personal tax. The same Government Deputies will come in here at Christmas when people are freezing on our streets or our hospitals have crashed under the winter pressure and they will decry the crises and call for action. I ask all those Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Independent Deputies to leave their crocodile tears at the front gate when those days come, as they inevitably will. By supporting this budget and this Finance Bill, with its tax cuts, they are making those days inevitable. Let us be clear on that at least, passing this Finance Bill means no new houses additional to those promised by the former Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Deputy Coveney, over a year ago. It also means a real cut to the health service when inflation, demographic pressures and other issues are taken into account.

The Finance Bill is about the details but we cannot divorce it from the big choices that it represents. Even in terms of the details it fails and there are major omissions and gaps that need to be addressed. We often talk about loopholes in Finance Bills. For me it is not a loophole, it is a policy choice. As I said on budget night, one of the flagship announcements, the crackdown on multinationals that have onshored intellectual property worth hundreds of billions of euro here over recent years, using these as write-offs against their profits, is flawed. The result of the change is that a multinational is no longer able to completely wipe out its company's tax liability. However, as drafted, the Finance Bill would apply this cap only to assets onshored from 11 October this year. That means the hundreds of billions of euro transferred here in recent years, especially in 2015, can be still be used by companies to potentially neutralise their entire corporation tax bill.

This is totally unacceptable and in this regard I welcome the recent comment from Mr. Seamus Coffey, the author of the report produced on behalf of the Government. He asks why the Government's new cap on the write-down of intangible assets should not apply to all assets, as opposed to the Government's proposal, which "grandfathers" the new measure, meaning that the 80% cap will apply only to intangible assets acquired post-budget. Due to the proposed cap's not applying to all intangible assets, the State could be missing out on a huge amount of corporate tax revenue, which might not materialise in the future.

Mr. Seamus Coffey notes that if the cap applied to all claims, existing and new, then the additional corporation tax to be collected in 2018 could be up to €1 billion using the 2015 figure published by the Revenue Commissioners and estimates from that time used by the Department of Finance, as opposed to the €150 million that the Government expects to raise through the grandfathered measure. If we applied it to all intangible assets we would be talking about €1 billion of additional taxation and would that not be nice to have to try to address the concerns and problems we have in health, education, housing and homelessness and other areas? We are paying for these onshored assets because they count towards our gross national income, GNI, which is pushing up our EU contribution. We are letting these companies pay no tax through their intangible asset write-downs and the State is picking up the tab by way of increased contributions to the EU budget due to the tax-free earnings many of these companies have from intangible assets. The State is making payments of approximately €200 million per annum to the EU budget as a result of this gross income which makes no contribution to Ireland's national budget.

Over a ten-year period, this led to payments to the EU of approximately €2 billion as a result of those intangible onshore assets. However, tax will not be applied in this instance because the provision only applies post-11 October. That is wrong.

The Government needs to amend its proposal to include all intangible assets in order to safeguard our tax base and ensure that the State is not unnecessarily picking up the tab for increased EU budget contributions relating to tax-free multinational corporation activities. That is not a loophole. It is a deliberate policy choice on the part of the Government. The same was true when the double Irish was phased out but companies using it can carry on doing so until 2020. Let us do the job right first time around. Of course, what we are doing is reversing a past Fine Gael decision brought in because the double Irish was being closed down.

There was dismay among the farming community and farm organisations on foot of the Government's proposal to triple to 6% the rate of stamp duty on farmland, despite the assurances of the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine that the increased rate would not apply to farmland after the budget. We need to question how the Minister came to that conclusion. Was he given an assurance by the Minister for Finance or did he just not understand it? Sinn Féin supported an amendment tabled by Deputy Fitzmaurice in an attempt to amend the Government's proposal but Fianna Fáil abstained when the matter was put to a vote. As a result, this measure came into effect on budget night.

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