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

The Paradise Papers, so-called, or what I think should more accurately be described as the parasite papers, reveal a nexus of elite, super-wealthy individuals, banks and corporations, such as Apple, stashing away countless billions of euro in offshore bank accounts, in places like Jersey in the Channel Islands, in order to hide those billions from the taxman here in this country, and robbing the people of this country of valuable revenues that we need to deal with the housing emergency, the shambles in our public health service, the gross inequalities in income, the poverty and the massive deficits in our infrastructure - all the many urgent and desperate needs. Billions upon billions being stashed away has been revealed in these papers.

I want to ask why it is that the Taoiseach, Deputy Leo Varadkar, when he was Minister for Social Protection, using public money, ran a nasty, unfounded campaign about welfare cheats. Where is the campaign about the super-wealthy corporate tax dodgers who are genuinely robbing us all of the hundreds of millions and billions we need for housing, health and other urgent social problems? Where is the campaign? Where is the outrage? Where is the opprobrium? Does the Tánaiste not agree that the Government and Deputy Michael Noonan have very serious questions to answer about tax changes that were made in 2014 and revealed in the Paradise Papers, that coincided with Apple restructuring its tax arrangements when the double Irish tax scam that cost us €13 billion in tax revenue was rumbled because of international and public outrage? Coincidentally, Deputy Michael Noonan changes the tax regime to benefit Apple and other corporations at the same time that they relocate some of their subsidiary companies to the Channel Islands and, as a result, we lose up to €800 million in tax revenue from Apple alone, never mind the other companies that almost certainly took advantage of this change.

See this speech in context