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

If the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, affair raises worrying and alarming questions about the relationship between politics and big business, the trip the Taoiseach will be taking to the World Economic Forum at Davos after Leaders' Questions, where he will spend a few days swanning around with some of the world's richest people and most profitable and wealthy corporations, also raises even bigger questions on a grander scale about the relationship between politics and the gross inequalities in wealth we see in this country and across the world.

Some very nasty, sinister and hateful forces on the far right want to blame the problems in our society on desperate and vulnerable refugees fleeing war and poverty. It may be better for them to focus on what is really the epitome of the problems we face in the world, that is, the world's billionaires and multinationals discussing the future of the world, particularly in light of the Oxfam report, which reveals the absolutely gross, grotesque and growing inequality that exists between the super rich in this country and across the world and the vast majority of people, who are crushed with the cost-of-living crisis and housing crisis and who are impacted by the crisis in our hospitals and in many of our public services. The facts revealed in the report are shocking. It states that the number of people in this country who have more than €50 million in personal wealth has doubled since 2012; the number of people worth nearly €5 million each has doubled in the same period and now comprises up to 20,000 people; the richest 1% of our population now have more than a quarter of all the wealth; and the richest 10% have more than 64% of all the wealth while the poorest 50% have just 1.1% of the wealth. These are grotesque and growing inequalities.

Will the Taoiseach now consider something we have called for a long time and that Oxfam is now calling for, which is the introduction of a wealth tax? Oxfam says that a modest tax on those who have wealth in excess of €4.7 million would raise more than €8 billion in extra revenue in one year.

Imagine what that would do to alleviate the crushing blows of the cost-of-living crisis, to address the housing crisis-----

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