Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

On behalf of my Independent colleagues and myself, I extend our deepest condolences to the family of Emma Mhic Mhathúna and salute her great courage and dignity.

Yesterday's budget was, I think, the 12th delivered by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, going back to 2009, and the third of this de facto coalition. One of the constant themes of all those and of the earlier budgets was the widespread use of total Government revenue forgone under the joint policy of tax expenditures, as for example the extra tax relief given yesterday for the Government's landlord friends. The 2014 Department of Finance report defines tax expenditures as "reducing tax obligations with respect to a benchmark tax rather than by direct expenditure" and "provisions that reduce or postpone revenue for a comparatively narrow population of taxpayers relative to the tax base", and such expenditures include exemptions, allowances, credits, deferral rules, etc.

These expenditures are very significant, as outlined in briefing paper 13 of 2018 by our excellent Parliamentary Budget Office, PBO. Even excluding benchmark taxes, income taxes, the PBO estimates a basic tax expenditure cost at over €5 billion in 2016, rising from €4.7 billion in 2014. These estimates are based only on 2016 data and data for some of the largest tax expenditures up to 2016 are still not available. In 2016, tax expenditures even on available figures comprised nearly 11% of total tax revenue or 9% of total voted expenditure.

Just before I left my office to come to the Dáil, I heard that the 2017 report was finally published but why is it not produced as part of the budget book? Many of us looked for it yesterday in the expenditures report but it was not there. What is the cost of the 2017 tax expenditure and the projected costs for 2018 and 2019?

Unlike 14 other EU states, there is no legislative requirement here for regular parliamentary debates and scrutiny of tax expenditures. There is also the added difficulty that we get the figures for the Revenue Commissioners and the Department of Finance and the Department's reports, which I have studied closely and which are very incomplete even going back to 2014.

The scale of these expenditures is indeed vast. For example, the research and development tax credit cost €670 million in 2016; capital acquisitions tax, CAT, agricultural relief cost €141 million in 2017; film relief cost €87.6 million in 2015; a range of reliefs supporting business cost nearly €560 million in 2015 and share-based remuneration relief cost €74 million in 2016. I think that is in today's report. Many of these expenditures have never been reviewed or assessed and the majority of taxpayers, our people, are still paying out for several pre-crash tax relief and avoidance schemes. The PBO rightly asserts that tax expenditures "represent a departure from the equity principle of taxation" giving rise to rent-seeking behaviour by favoured taxpayers.

The PBO also comments on the "fiscal illusory effect" of tax expenditures when they are perceived as a tax cut when they are actually spending increases. Will the Taoiseach accept the key recommendations of our PBO for systematic ex antereviews of all tax expenditures, a definitive list of all Irish benchmark relief measures and all tax expenditures, enhanced costing methods and much improved access, availability and transparency of data on these expenditures? Will he legislate, perhaps in the Finance Bill, to place this responsibility with the PBO and with the Committee on Budgetary Oversight, chaired by his colleague, Deputy Colm Brophy?

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