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

Deputy Wallace has made most of the salient points already but Christian Aid - and Gerard McSorley, in particular, who phoned me recently to brief me on this - deserves a lot of credit for a very good paper exposing this new tax avoidance structure using the double taxation treaties between ourselves and Malta. I would just add two points on that. First, Mr. Eddie Hobbs phoned me recently. I would not be on his political page on many things but he phoned me to point out that one of the things we should be doing is penalising accounting and consultancy firms that are in receipt of public contracts who are knowingly and on a very significant scale advising corporations and wealthy Irish individuals who can no longer avail of the double Irish or other tax avoidance mechanisms to go to Malta. They are advising them to set up in Malta so that they can continue to avoid tax. That is what some of these accountancy and consultancy firms are doing, firms that are in receipt of public contracts on a regular basis. Our tax code - I cannot quote the exact section but I am sure the officials will know it- states that any measure that is taken for the specific purposes of avoiding tax is not allowed. Even without specifying exactly what that is, one is not allowed to do something for the specific purposes of avoiding tax according to our tax code. We should act against firms based here that are doing this and ban them from getting public contracts. Why on earth would we give public contracts to accountancy and consultancy firms that are simultaneously advising rich corporations and individuals how to avoid paying taxes that are owed to the Irish people and the Exchequer?

My second point is on the fact that we have another double taxation treaty in this Bill. We called a vote on it, much to the bewilderment I suspect, of many in this House. Deputies were asking a few weeks ago why we were opposing a motion for a double taxation treaty with Macau. Most people do not even know where Macau is located. Macau is one of the biggest tax havens in Asia and this Bill provides for a double taxation treaty with Macau. What is that about? We did not get much justification for that. What is that about? Is this going to be yet another mechanism for these guys to use the relationship between our tax code and that of another tax haven like Macau to avoid paying tax? I would certainly like an explanation as to why that is contained in this Bill. Why is the Government pushing a double taxation treaty with a known tax haven? Deputies simply have to google "tax haven" and "Macau" and they will get reams of information about how Macau's main business is being a tax haven. The Bill is riddled with this kind of stuff.

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