Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister's defence of what he admits is aggressive tax planning is that we could lose out if we change something. We are discussing a race to the bottom in terms of how tax is collected from those who can best afford to pay it. The Minister asserts that we are fully in line with international best practice. When we argue in the House about how Shannon Airport is allowed to be used as a forward base for US military purposes, I sometimes hear the argument that other Europeans are working with the Americans as well and that the Americans are our friends. It is almost as if the fact that they bring arms, bombs and so on through to destroy places like Yemen is none of our business.

Deputy Pearse Doherty mentioned that we were robbing the Third World with our behaviour. ActionAid Ireland made the same point recently, namely, that the Irish double taxation treaty system was depriving low-income countries of vital revenue. According to it, multinational "companies from wealthier countries have a rapidly increasing presence in" low-income source countries where the relevant economic activity takes place, but the source country's ability to tax foreign multinationals is restricted in most of Ireland's tax treaties with lower to middle-income countries, thereby undermining their taxing rights.

We will not start discussing climate change again, but we need to play a better role. What we are doing in terms of the taxation of large companies leaves much to be desired.

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