Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

-----and see that what is consistent is that while pretending to talk about common sense and all that good stuff, in reality, they represent the interests of the rich in this country. That is the truth of it.

It is quite ironic today to have speeches telling us it is not possible to increase corporation tax or to have a tax on wealth. The reason it is ironic today is that I got a push notification from The Irish Times to say that the first €3 billion tranche of Apple tax money has landed in State coffers. I remember being told something was impossible. Those of us who opposed the Apple tax deal, called it out and opposed the waste of public money on fighting a case to keep the money on the balance sheet of one of the richest corporations in the world were told, sure the money would never be yours anyway, all the other countries would try to take it and it would never end up being in the hands of the Irish State. What has happened? We are utterly vindicated. The first €3 billion has come and the rest will come. Do not believe it when people say alternative policies are not possible or workable; that is designed to constrain the terms of debate to say to people in the old Thatcher terms that there is no alternative. It is not true. There is an alternative to the USC; that is what our amendment is about. One alternative is a millionaire's tax on the wealth of the super-rich.

Research by Oxfam founds that the richest 1% own more than one third of Irish financial wealth. There are 11 billionaires in this country. Men like Eugene Murtagh, the founder of Kingspan whose company was found partly responsible for the Grenfell Tower disaster; Denis O'Brien, who bribed a Fine Gael Minister to secure the second mobile phone licence; and Dermot Desmond, who made payments to Charlie Haughey. All of them amassed their riches not off their own work but off the backs of workers and from corruption. All now have more money than they could ever spend. There is also more than 1,400 people in this country who have wealth of over €47 million; more than 20,000 have wealth of more than €4.7 million. Just by taxing this tiny elite, less than 1% of the population, Oxfam has shown how €8 billion could be raised every year. That is €3 billion more than the total amount raised from the USC last year. We could abolish the USC and still have €3 billion left over every year to fund public housing, free public childcare or a proper national health service. Every year, the Finance Bill is passed and Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens make a political choice not to tax the super-rich, who can well afford it. They choose instead to impose the burden of taxation on ordinary workers, who cannot.

In the midst of a dire cost-of-living crisis, where so many families struggle literally to keep the lights and heat on and to put food on the table, we should not make millionaires and billionaires exempt from paying. We should make them pay, not take the money out of workers' pockets. There should be no billionaires. People do not have the right to have billions of euro of wealth. They do not deserve it. I do not believe they have earned the multiples they have compared to the average worker and the average amount of wealth. It should be taken from them and redistributed to those who need it. They are the only species on this planet who deserve to become extinct.

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