Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

It is only a pity that Deputy Leddin was not in government for the past five years. He conveniently forgot that the Government has plenty of money, which it is squirrelling away in a rainy day fund for the future, but that is another point.

I also welcome the decision today by the finance committee to request that the Minister for Finance and the Minister for public expenditure present themselves before that committee to answer questions regarding the Government's policy on refusing the Apple tax money in recent years. It is incredible that for such a big chunk of money and such a serious issue, where the Government has been shown to be breaking the law in this regard, the Minister for Finance is somewhere else rather than the Dáil Chamber in dealing with this issue. That is an incredible situation. He attended the Chamber for a few minutes of the debate but did not attend properly for the whole debate. It shows the lack of respect for the Dáil but also the issue here. The Minister for Finance is entitled to a break but he has had a long break over the summer.

The actions of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in making Ireland a tax haven for the last number of years speak volumes about where the loyalty of those parties has been. The Government charged a tax rate of 0.005% to Apple while many people in the State were paying 40% in tax. Apple paid a tax ar a rate of one eight thousandth of what a worker was paying within this country at the time. That is the different attitude the Government took to a worker than it did to Apple at the time. It shows where those loyalties were. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party even paid €10 million to defend the interests of Apple, which is an incredible situation. I listened to the Minister, Deputy Donohoe. He was extremely cynical. He sought to be in two separate, mutually exclusive political spaces at the same time. He said he accepted the ruling on the Apple tax but at the same time, he disagreed with the ruling on the Apple tax. You cannot be in those two different locations at the same time, politically speaking. We have not had an opportunity for the Government to explain exactly what is behind the fact that there has not been tax justice in this system.

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