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

In broad terms, I think this Finance Bill has failed to address the cost-of-living and housing crises that are imposing such hardship on hundreds of thousands of families and workers in this country. It could have done so, but, as is typical of this Government, it failed to do so. This failure is driven by a commitment to always protect the haves over the have-nots, the very wealthy over the working people and the less well-off.

Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the contrast between what was given to renters and what was given to landlords. It is shocking, quite honestly. Others have referred to this issue, and it was also rightly referred to during the debates on budget day. Renters got an additional €88 million in the budget, while landlords got an additional €160 million. The landlords, therefore, got twice what the renters got. Of course, there are hundreds of thousands of renters, but a much smaller group of landlords. Proportionately speaking, then, this was yet another bonanza for the landlords. While the renters, who are crippled with unaffordable rents, often so unaffordable that they are being driven into homelessness, got a pathetic, tokenistic, drop-in-the-ocean amount of €250 extra in the context of the rent tax credit, the landlords will get an extra €600 next year, €800 the year after and €1,000 the year after that. This is when those self-same landlords, or I will say extremely many of them, because, of course, there are some who are not ripping people off, are crucifying people with shocking and obscene rents. Looking at the average rent being paid, we can see they are charging people just because they can.

In my area, it would probably now be impossible to find anywhere to rent that would cost less than €2,500 monthly. It would more likely to be €3,000 monthly. As I was explaining to the Taoiseach today, this leads us to the situation where someone working in a hospital in our area, looking after the sick, just to give one example from the constituency I share with the Minister of State, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, is now homeless. On her earnings, which are over the social housing income threshold, this woman cannot apply for social housing, cannot get any income support and is now homeless. I think she is in her early 60s, and has nowhere to go.

Another family, to whom I have referred here plenty of times, will be evicted, through no fault of their own, when they will be required to leave by the bailiffs in less than two weeks. The man is a worker for a semi-State company. He has worked all his life and never taken anything off the State. There is nothing available for this family and they cannot find anywhere to live. After working all his life and paying his taxes, this man and his family have nowhere to go. This is what is happening to working people in this country. Despite pleas for the Government to address this issue in the budget, it did not. It has given multiple euro to landlords compared with what has been given to renters.

It is similar with the universal social charge, USC, where there were a few tweaks, but these will not make a huge difference. Looking through the Government's own tables in the tax policy changes booklet concerning the budget, basically, with the changes to the USC, people will get 1%, 2%, 3%, or, in a small number of cases, 4% of an increase in terms of their income, but this is when inflation is running at 5%. In real terms, then, when we strip out the once-off measures, workers will be less well-off next year than they were two years ago. The real value of people's wages, therefore, is being cut. This is really what inflation is, a profit bonanza for those at the top and pay cuts for the ordinary workers. This is done via increased prices, inflation, cost increases, etc., relative to the pay increases that people receive, which do not match the level of inflation.

People Before Profit-Solidarity proposed getting rid of the USC for all those earning less than €100,000. This measure would cost about €3 billion and would be paid for by putting in place higher taxation bands on those earning more than €100,000, €150,000, €250,000, etc. This could raise €3 billion and take the terrible burden of the USC off the backs of workers. It was supposed to be an austerity tax, but the Government has maintained it. Small tweaks in this budget have not changed the fact that it is a completely unjust burden that has robbed working people in this country of thousands and thousands of euro.

Another contrast I want to draw is the research and development tax credit change from 25% to 30%, a further tax relief overwhelmingly benefiting the most spectacularly wealthy companies in this country. That tax credit primarily goes to the big IT and pharmaceutical companies. At the last count the research and development tax credit for 2021 was costing the workers of this country €753 million a year. This is going to some of the most spectacularly profitable companies and now they are getting an extra €27 million. The Government will say we need to stimulate research and development. Of course we do, but here is a big contrast. We are giving €753 million - and now with €27 million it is going up towards €800 million - to a tiny group of the most profitable corporations that post profits of billions and which pay very small levels of tax. Then we have the people who actually do the research and development in our public universities. As we saw from the several protests, including outside the Dáil a few weeks ago, PhD researchers are getting less than the minimum wage for teaching in our universities and doing research. We give all the research and development money to Facebook, to Apple, to the big pharmaceutical companies, when we have 10,000 people working in our universities, without whom our universities would not be able to function and without whom we would have nobody to teach people in college. They are doing research and development work for the universities and for this country but are earning less than the minimum wage. It is shocking. People with PhDs or who are studying for PhDs are earning less than the minimum wage and living in absolute abject poverty. Would it not have been better to give the research and development money the Government wants to put into that area to those 10,0000 PhD researchers so they can have a living income rather than give it to companies that are making billions in profits and pay very little tax?

Here is another contrast. Mortgage interest relief is to be given to people who have been hammered by the increases in interest charged by the banks and the vulture funds, increases which are also related to the European Central Bank hiking up interest rates ten times in the past year. The Government gives €1,250 maximum relief to people affected by these changes, but then let us look at the reality. I was talking to a friend of mine who has a mortgage with one of these companies. She is paying €7,000 more this year for her mortgage than she did last year. She is a single mother and working. Where is she supposed to get the rest? It is the banks we bailed out that are charging her these interest rates. She is then down €7,000, as are tens of thousands of other mortgage holders. What is happening to the banks who hold their mortgages? Their profits have gone through the roof. Bank of Ireland was making a billion euro in profits in the first six months of this year. These are massive and staggering increases on the profits it made previously. The bank is actually benefiting from the hikes in mortgage interest rates because it keeps its deposits with the European Central Bank, profits off the high interest rates, and then absolutely crucifies the mortgage holders. Again, the Government does not address this profiteering by the banks. It is only planning €200 million on the bank levy, which is a tiny fraction of what these banks have made in increased windfall profits, while tens of thousands of mortgage holders are being absolutely screwed.

Another giveaway to big business is the angel investor tax relief, which is another €55 million to the capitalists and basically to people with loads of money who are already very rich people. Let us give them another €55 million for angel investor relief. To my mind this is money that should be going into our public universities or into direct supports for small and medium-sized enterprises rather than tax reliefs for super-rich investors. That is, of course, typical of the Government.

It is always worth saying in these debates just how much the profits have gone up. It is incredible. In 2012, total gross profits for corporations in this country were €74 billion. In 2021 and nine years later, they were €250 billion. Profits have quadrupled while working people have been absolutely crucified. That is the reality of the inflation so-called cost-of-living crisis. It is not a crisis for the big multinational corporations or for the very rich. In fact their wealth has massively increased on the back of profiteering, but working people are being absolutely hammered.

My last point is about the section 481 film tax credit. I will seek to clarify this, as I always do, and this is an issue I pursue every year in the Finance Bill and more generally. I want to see more money going to the film industry because it is an area where we have huge amounts of creative talent and huge numbers of brilliant writers, directors, performers, construction crew, the people who build the sets, and all of the people who make these movies happen. The problem is we give this money in the form of a tax relief, which is a very unusual tax relief, to the film producers but many of the people who work in the industry - the actors, the writers, the performers and the crew - live in absolute poverty, have absolutely no security of income, no security of employment and essentially have to live at the whim of film producers who are making a fortune from the public subsidies given to them. The Government, however, does not put conditions on those subsidies to ensure those working in the industry have quality employment and training, even though it is in the legislation. This includes for the writers the directors and the actors a requirement for producers to comply with the EU copyright directive around the royalties from the future profits that are made by the film producers for the use of their film into the future. I will go into this on Committee Stage and put in amendments.

At the moment, actors, writers and performers are forced to sign buyout contracts where they sign away to the film producer companies their rights to future royalties if those films are a success. They are given a small upfront payment that is supposed to be compensation. In reality it allows the film producers to run off with all the profits into the future and the actors, writers and performers get nothing of those future profits. Similarly, if they refuse to sign those contracts, they will not get on the film. It is as simple as that. If they kick up too much about it, they may be blacklisted from the industry and never work again in the industry. This is what happens. It is a similar situation with the film crew. Even though they may have worked for 20 years or 30 years in the film industry, there is no recognition of the film crews' service to the industry. There are no pensions, no sick pay and no holiday pay. There is nothing and the clock goes back to zero every time a film is made. Even though they are getting money from the State to make these films, the producers give themselves huge fees and often significant earnings from it. The poor set crew, the transport workers, the people who build the sets, the prop workers and so on are basically at the whim of film producers who say, "If you ask for your rights and your employment rights too stridently, you will never work again in this industry and you are blacklisted out of the industry." The Government has been told this but it does not do anything about it. The Government should put clear stipulations in the Finance Bill to ensure this mistreatment of workers ends.

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