Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

13. To ask the Taoiseach if he will report on his recent attendance at the World Economic Forum in Davos. [3073/23]

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

14. To ask the Taoiseach if he will report on his recent attendance at the World Economic Forum in Davos. [3076/23]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I propose to take Questions Nos. 13 and 14 together.

I travelled to the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos on 18 January. That evening I attended an IDA Ireland event where I met with some leading job creators in Ireland from across industry, including manufacturing, chemicals, technology and finance. On 19 January, I attended a foreign policy-focused event hosted by Lally Weymouth of The Washington Postwith guests including other leaders, heads of international organisations and members of the US Administration. That afternoon I participated in a panel discussion on widening Europe's horizons which considered how the new European political community can foster transformative political dialogue amid wider geopolitical shifts. My fellow panellists included the Serbian President, Aleksandar Vučić, the Albanian Prime Minister, Edi Rama and the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola who will visit Dublin on 2 February. I also attended a dinner hosted by the World Economic Forum president, Børge Brende, which included other participants from the European Commission, the IMF, the OECD, other European leaders and representatives from industry.

During my visit, I had meetings with a range of international and political leaders, including the President of Moldova, Maia Sandu, who will host the next European Political Community summit in June, and Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, leader of the Belarusian democratic movement. We talked about her particular connection to Roscrea and Ireland, the political situation in Belarus and the ongoing war in Ukraine. I also met with Samantha Power, USAID administrator, and we spoke about Ireland-US aid collaboration on food security and child nutrition. I also met with the leader of the Labour Party in the UK, Keir Starmer. We discussed the importance of a strong British-Irish relationship and the ongoing EU-UK negotiations on the protocol, as well as our shared concern for the restoration of the Good Friday Agreement institutions.

I met with senior representatives of multinational companies of significance to Ireland, including Intel, Meta and Amazon Web Services. These meetings are typically an opportunity for company executives to update me on progress with their operations in Ireland and their future development plans, including in the context of current job losses across the tech sector. For my part, it was an opportunity to emphasise again Ireland's core strengths, including talent, stability and a proven track record.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The Davos gathering of billionaires, political elites and multinational corporations that are staggeringly wealthy to discuss the future of the world is sort of nauseating in and of itself but at least it provides the opportunity for groups like Oxfam to highlight gross inequality and wealth and put forward proposals. As I mentioned earlier, and as we have done ever since I have been in this Dáil, we are putting forward proposals for a modest wealth tax on those very highest of earners. Oxfam has proposed a modest incremental wealth tax on the net assets of people who have wealth in excess of €4.7 million. This is not a tax, as the Taoiseach said earlier, on ordinary people. Some 95,000 people have that much wealth in this country. Would it not be reasonable to put a 2% or 3% wealth tax on that wealth to fund housing, health services and cost-of-living measures?

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The only good thing about Davos is the fact that Oxfam produces this report on a yearly basis to highlight the galloping inequality in the world, which has accelerated throughout the process of Covid when some big corporations made massive profits. The consequence of that galloping inequality is that in Ireland, the two richest people now have as much wealth - €15 billion - as the poorest 50% of the population. The number of super-rich people has doubled. Does the Taoiseach have a problem with that or does he just think that is the price of capitalism, that these people gather all the wealth but some of it trickles down? All the evidence suggests that the money is not trickling down. Instead, it continues to flood upwards but he is resistant to proper taxes on corporations or wealth taxes to try to use some of this revenue to benefit the majority in this society.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I just have a different perspective on it to the Deputy. I do not think our end points are different; I just have a different perspective on it. It is the Deputy's view that higher taxes always result in more revenues for the Government, which we can then spend on health, housing and everything else. My view is that it is not necessarily like that. We have very low corporation profit taxes in Ireland and yet we bring in more per capita in corporation profit taxes than almost any other country in the world or in Europe.

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

That is because we are a tax haven.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

It is the low taxes on corporations in Ireland that produce the massive tax revenues we can spend on health, housing and education. If we doubled or trebled our corporation profit tax, I think the receipts would go down. I do not want that to ever be tested. That is one of the reasons I am glad neither of the Deputies is Minister for Finance, because I think they would test it. They would hike up profit taxes on businesses and those businesses would relocate elsewhere, taking their jobs and profits elsewhere, and they would bring in a new era of austerity. That is not something I would like to see.