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

The annual gathering at Davos, as a gathering of the world's global corporate and billionaire elite, always brings into fairly sharp focus the ever-growing, shocking and obscene levels of wealth inequality in our world. This year, Oxfam reported that the richest 1% have the same amount of wealth as 82% of the remainder of the world's population. It also pointed out that there are now 2,000 billionaires and that their wealth increased by €762 billion last year. I repeat, that figure is their increase in wealth in one year. It is enough to wipe out global poverty seven times over. That is shocking and obscene enough. However, what is really shocking is that even this global elite hauled our Government and the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, over the coals and slated them during a debate on corporate taxation and the role that tax evasion by the world's biggest multinationals plays in creating a race to the bottom which leads directly to that obscene and growing level of inequality. We were slated. Our reputation is in shreds. Joseph Stiglitz, CEOs and politicians from this global elite pointed the finger, rightly in my opinion, at Ireland, for its disgraceful role in spearheading the race to the bottom in respect of corporate tax. The position is such that 13 of the top 100 companies in Ireland pay an effective tax rate of less than 1%. In the case of Apple, the figure is 0.2%. We do nothing about this. Rather, we go to bat with Apple to defend its right not to pay €13 billion in tax and then claim that we are trying to address this problem as part of a global solution.

Even the global elite does not believe us. Its members are slating us and our reputation is in shreds. Are they not right that Ireland has played a really rotten role in leading a global race to the bottom in respect of corporate tax and contributing to the shocking and obscene levels of wealth inequality in the world?

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