Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

On behalf of the Rural Independent Group, I salute and support the brave members of An Garda Síochána and wish them well in their recovery.

Ireland has become a country of the establishment. In Ireland, citizens, that is the voters, are consulted every four or five years at the time of a general election. However, institutions that are part of, or close to, the State have regular and daily access to Ministers, power and Government decision-making. In fact, many Departments even pay these organisations to provide them with advice. Is it any wonder then that the system is stacked against the ordinary man and woman?

Today, and every day, Irish people are hammered by the Government's approach to taxation. The marginal rate of tax, PRSI and USC on average workers now rests at 52%, while on the other hand the rate of corporation tax is 12.5%. This represents a difference of nearly 40 percentage points and contrasts with Germany, where an average worker pays 28% in income tax and corporation tax is 26%. In Germany, the same loopholes do not exist for large corporations and investment funds to evade paying tax while in Ireland, these loopholes mean that large investment funds, corporations and cuckoo funds pay little or no tax at all. Google, one of the world's richest companies, was facilitated to move €63 billion in profit out of Ireland in 2019 and pay €263 million in taxes, thus representing an effective tax rate of 0.4%. This means that for every €100 earned by Google it paid 40 cents in tax, but out of every €100 earned by the average worker in Ireland in 2019 he or she paid a staggering €52 in tax.

It is obvious what is going on. One does not need to be a scientist to see who is getting special treatment here. It is an utter disgrace of gigantic proportions to see the deep rot and hugely significant issues that are conveniently never debated in this House. This needs to change. The Government needs to come clean here. Successive Governments have turned a blind eye to this behaviour and conveniently swept it under the carpet. That does not resemble a socially just or democratic country. These are not the values that our founding fathers fought for, those men and women who were brave and some of whom paid the ultimate price. They were patriots and selfless men and women. They certainly did not pay the ultimate price to allow, 100 years on, constant exploitation by foreign multinational corporations and to see our people punished and abused in that way. As I said earlier, we celebrate them and we should live up to their ideals and standards.

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