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

There is a global move for such corporations to start paying their taxes, and we should not be the laggards on the matter, but we are. Even though we know the curtain is starting to come down on the corporations, we think we should try to get as much as we can out of it before it does. That is a mistake, however, because we could get more by getting ahead of the curve than by being the laggards. I do not believe the idea that if we introduce a minimum effective tax rate to apply to companies that make the scale of profits that such companies make in Ireland, which will ensure they do not benefit as much from the clear loopholes they exploit and that we will get a bit more as a minimum - a minimum of billions of euro - they will all run out of the country. There is nowhere left for them to run, particularly in the English-speaking world within the EU, which is where they want to be, even more so after Brexit.

The minimum effective rate would still be well below what the rest of Europe pays because, as the Minister rightly said, the nominal rates in Europe are considerably higher and probably average at more than 20%. Even with the reliefs they give, however, which might reduce the effective rate to 10%, 9% or whatever it is, the rates are still higher than what we pay on pre-tax profits. We could pitch it higher, get in a fair bit of money, and we would not risk them all running for cover because there is nowhere left for them to go. We should do it because it would give us a great deal of money for the infrastructure, housing and public transport on which they, as much as anyone else, rely, although they do not pay the fair share as a proportion of their profits that they should towards them.

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