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

It is a remarkable achievement by the Government that it has a budget surplus of, I think, €25 billion. The Minister of State can correct me if I am wrong. I think it is €25 billion or in that region. It has a windfall of €13 billion plus in Apple tax money that it did not want because it would have preferred that Apple, a staggeringly wealthy and profitable company, would have had it instead but it was forced to take this €13 billion from the company. This gave the Government an extraordinary amount, yet ordinary workers and the very least well-off in our society will just about keep pace with the cost of living and inflation or, in the case of some of the poorest in our society, they will actually be marginally worse off. That is an extraordinary achievement. For the Government to have that much money at its disposal and for the workers who generate that wealth to be no better off, or possibly worse off, is an immense achievement.

We would have to ask ourselves how that could possibly happen.

It is very dispiriting for working people. When the country was on its knees following the financial crash caused by the activities of property developers, banks and speculators, workers got it in the neck. They saw their incomes slashed, their tax burden massively increased and expenditure in key areas like housing and public services slashed, leaving a legacy that remains with us today, namely the worst housing and homelessness crisis the country has ever seen, a persistent and ongoing crises in our health service and the continuation of things like the universal social charge which were introduced as supposedly temporary emergency taxes but which persist. The Government and, sadly, some of the Opposition, such as Deputy Nash, seem to think it would almost be sacrilege to suggest that we get rid of what the Government promised at the time they were introduced were emergency taxes.

In very simple terms, the lesson of the past decade or so is that when the country is on its knees, the workers get it in the neck and the rich and big business are bailed out. When the country has record amounts of money available to it, is booming like it has never boomed before and has profit rates that we have never seen before, the workers get it in the neck and the rich are protected. Even the ESRI is calling the Government out for having missed the opportunity to eliminate poverty. That is pretty remarkable. The Government has the money to eliminate poverty, but did not do so. Much of the poverty was generated through the previous austerity period.

If the Government does not address poverty when the country is on its knees or when it has more money that it knows what to do with, it would be understandable for people to say that it is never going to eliminate poverty and has no serious intention of doing so. If it did not do so in the past and will not do so now, then when will it do it? The answer is that it is never going to do it. Senator Michael McDowell, I believe, gave the game away when he said a certain level of poverty and inequality in society was necessary in order to give people a bit of an incentive. That is the thinking of the people who run this country.

The shocking side is that while people suffered, and continue to suffer, the consequences of austerity, at a time when we have more money than we ever had they still get nothing. Despite the surplus, not an additional extra social or affordable house has been promised by the Government beyond what was previously committed to. Again, that is an absolutely extraordinary achievement. While all of that is happening, the profits of the corporations and wealth of the super rich are going through the roof.

It is worth reading out the figures because they tell a story that is hardly ever even commented on. The only people who think about these stories are those in the Central Bank or Revenue when they produce reports. In 2013, total corporate profits in this country were €80 billion. The next year, they were €95 billion. The following year they were €143 billion, followed by €158 billion. They then went to €159 billion, and then €190 billion, €203 billion, €199 billion – marginally down – and then jumped up to €266 billion. In 2022, the figure increased to €317 billion. The figure for last year is probably around €350 billion, although we do not have the up-to-date figures.

Corporations paid between 4.6% and, at most, 7.1% tax on the gross trading profits they made in any given year. They manage that feat because the Government gives lots of allowances, deductions and tax credits, which are renewed every year. Most people do not know about these measures, but they allow enormous profits to be made due to the fact that taxable profit is massively written down.

All of these figures can befuddle people, but the interesting thing people should know is that the total corporation tax paid by these companies last year was €22 billion. People would say that is a lot of money. We cannot spend it because it might not be there for a while. Workers, however, paid significantly more than that. The biggest contributor to the revenues available to the State remain workers. Given that workers pay more tax, was their combined income more or less than the gross profits of corporations? As they are paying more, one would think their gross income would be a lot more, but it is significantly less. Workers pay more and earn less. The corporations pay less and earn more. Those profits have gone through the roof to absolutely extraordinary levels.

Ordinary workers pay, proportionally, more tax per euro. That is the real story. Who benefits from that? The Irish and international rich, whether they are investment funds, vulture funds, big corporations or whatever, are the ones who benefit from all of this. The Irish rich are part of that.

In the Central Bank quarterly accounts, quarter 4 of 2023 shows that the net worth of Irish households was greater than €1.1 trillion, an increase of €33 billion on the previous quarter of 2023. That is an amazing fact given to us by the Central Bank. The figure includes €527 billion of financial assets and €738 billion in housing assets. The Central Bank tells us that 10% of Irish households own 54% of all that wealth. The richest 1% own 35.4%. The richest 10% of people own €550 billion. That is unbelievable and mind-boggling. It is so mind-boggling that people cannot get their heads around it and it is never commented on. To bring this down to brass tacks, it means that in Ireland there are more than ten billionaires, 1,400 individuals with wealth in excess of €47 million and over 20,000 individuals with wealth in excess of €4.7 million.

What do we do with that kind of information? The first thing is to know it, because that shows who is benefiting from all of the work. All of that wealth is generated by workers. We could get rid of the USC, as we propose, for those earning less than €100,000 per year. We would have several billion left over to pay for getting rid of the austerity tax and perhaps redistribute something that working people lost over the years of austerity by introducing a small wealth tax on all of that money.

A tax on the top 5% – not even the top 10%, as Oxfam proposed - was included in our budget submission. It is very similar to the wealth tax we have proposed for the past decade. It is interesting that organisations like Oxfam are talking about this, along with some mainstream economists. This is something that is being implemented in some countries around the world.

We propose a modest 2% net wealth tax on net wealth over €4.7 million. The rich would not even feel it because their wealth is accumulating much more value than that. It would generate a huge amount of money for public services, housing, health, infrastructure and all of the rest and lift people out of poverty. We propose a tax of 3% on wealth between €50 million and €1 billion. A handful of people would be affected by that. We propose a 5% tax on the wealth of the ten people who have more than €1 billion.

Again, they would not even feel it, but it would pay for getting rid of USC for every worker and leave several billion over. What the Government has done in this Bill is to introduce marginal reductions in USC, mostly benefitting middle income workers, who deserve a break, and doing very little for the lowest paid. One of our big proposals, as well as getting rid of the USC, is to introduce a refundable tax credit for the 20% of workers who earn less than €18,750 per year. It is an amazing fact in and of itself that 20% of workers earn less than €18,750 per year. They do not benefit from tax credits because they do not earn enough. A refundable tax credit would cost €1.3 billion and would give them a significant boost. They are the precarious workers, part-time workers, the people who are really struggling.

Vacant homes are a scandal. Although the census found 166,000 empty properties, of which 65,000 had been vacant since 2016 and 40,000 vacant since 2011, last year, the Government managed to levy the vacant homes tax on only 3,500 properties out of the total number and collected €2 million. It is unbelievable and probably the biggest scandal in the country that tens of thousands of homes are sitting empty and vacant while we face in the teeth of a massive homelessness and housing crisis. That is what the Government's vacant homes tax can deliver - nothing.

We propose a much more ambitious vacant property tax. The tax would apply to all houses left vacant for more than six months without good reason and there would be a €1,000 tax per month on vacant homes, which would force them back into use or generate significant revenue. We should have similarly aggressive taxes on the approximately 15,000 ha of residential zoned land that is being hoarded by a small number of property developers and speculators who are helping to ratchet up the price of housing by hoarding building land that could and should be used to build affordable housing for the people affected by the housing crisis.

In short, this budget continues with the same pattern of handing all the benefits of economic growth and huge profitability, not to the workers who generated it but, to the corporations and super rich. The Government will not even put modest taxes on these people to make them pay their fair share so ordinary workers pick up the tab for the cost-of-living and housing crises.

In my last five minutes I will speak about the film industry. This is typical of the pattern. The film producers got everything they want, all the things they asked for. Of course they did. They do every year. There are changes to the section 481 film tax credit that the producers lobbied for so that films under €20 million qualifying expenditure will now get an 8% boost and up to 40% of tax credits on qualifying expenditure, which is an additional €67 million along with the one that will go to the unscripted sector. I want to see, and have long advocated for, more money to go into arts and culture. We are still well below the European average and certainly the film and audiovisual sector needs to have investment in it. It is an area where we can do a lot better than we have to date. We have an incredible array of talent, including actors, directors, writers, crew, technical people and so forth. However, has anyone done a study of how all the money being handed to the film producing companies is translating into security of income and employment for the performers, writers, directors, crew and so on? If it was done, we would find that all those people live completely precarious existences with no security whatsoever of income and employment, none, zero. Furthermore, actors, performers and writers are being robbed or their residuals, the royalties they should benefit from if certain film productions or TV series are successful and generate downstream revenue for the producers who get the money to finance the films from the State - that is the taxpayer, including those same workers. However, the producers run off with the royalties.

In the old days, actors used to get small cheques if there was a repeat of a series they were in ten years previously. They might get small cheques every now and then, which was a big help because they live such a precarious existence. Now they are being robbed of those royalties because the Irish film producers who get the money every year from the Government - it keeps going up - do not want to give them the same contracts as are given to actors and other performers, writers and directors in England and the North of Ireland. I am talking about the Producers' Alliance for Cinema and Television, PACT, equity agreement, which they have asked again and again be used as a template for contracts the Government should enforce. I do not know how many times I and they have asked the Government to attach conditions to section 481, such that the contracts given to these people must guarantee that they at least get terms and conditions for their residuals akin to those in Britain. The producers are fighting it and the Government will not attach the conditions. In the past few days, I heard it again from the Minister who said there are no contractual obligations attached to section 481. Why not? Why are there no contractual obligations? They are getting handouts of taxpayers' money, but they do not want to give the performers and other creative people the benefit of the profits generated by their talent. Therefore, the majority of people who work in the arts live in poverty. That is the reality. They live in poverty.

It is similar for film crew. I do not know how many times I have raised the matter, probably 100 times in the past ten years. Film crew have no protection from being blacklisted and if they ask for their rights under fixed term workers legislation and directives, they are blacklisted out of the industry and will never work again. Many of them have paid that price although their names have appeared on film credits for many years. They worked in the industry for 20 or 30 years. These are painters, stage crew, carpenters, and transport drivers. If they say they have the right to be re-employed because the producer's film is being funded and they have worked for that producer on several occasions, though under different designated activity companies, DACs, the film producers hide behind these DACs. They say that although they set up 20 DACs a person worked for over 20 years, the producers say they are not the employers, even though they are the employers. They get away with it. The Government lets them away with it by refusing to attach conditions to section 481. For God's sake, if the Government is going to give them this money - I want money to go into the film industry - will it attach conditions that guarantee the rights, decent employment, security, income and some certainty for the crew, writers, actors and other performers?

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