Results 13,161-13,180 of 26,901 for speaker:Richard Boyd Barrett

Finance Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) and Final Stage (23 Nov 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: I do, because this has gone on and on. Billy fought for most of working life on this but so have many thousands of building workers. Indeed, I have cited to the Minister recent examples of where this sort of practice continues to go on. Let me cite a few facts. Billy and his colleagues would always say, "It is not just that we lose out, but that the public is losing out," because if...

Finance Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) and Final Stage (23 Nov 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: I move amendment No. 77:In page 69, between lines 30 and 31, to insert the following:“73.The Minister shall, within 6 months of the passing of this Act, bring a report on the revenue implications of bogus self-employment, i.e. the misclassification of PAYE workers as self-employed.”. While I realise we are approaching the end of the debate, I consider this amendment one of the...

Finance Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) and Final Stage (23 Nov 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Bringing in an amendment of this size and significance at the last minute without Deputies having the opportunity to examine it or explanation notes or having questions answered on a range of areas is simply not on. I am inclined to oppose it. Yet again, the amendment seems to be providing some sort of tax incentive for private developers. I could be wrong because I have not had a...

Finance Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) and Final Stage (23 Nov 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: We have had the debate and there is a difference. We are in the minority. I agree with Deputy Mattie McGrath and others concerned about the rural-urban divide, or the areas that have seen recovery in this sector against those which have not. Those areas need help. There is another side to the equation that can be seen with the figures we got from the Department of Finance concerning...

Finance Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) and Final Stage (23 Nov 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: I move amendment No. 64:In page 57, after line 32, to insert the following:“58.The Minister shall, within 6 months of the passing of this Act, bring a report on the second reduced rate of VAT of 9 per cent and additional revenue that could be raised by bringing this rate back to 13.5 per cent.”. We had quite a bit of discussion on Committee Stage about this. I will be brief....

Finance Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) and Final Stage (23 Nov 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: The Deputy will put on a few pounds drinking milk.

Finance Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) and Final Stage (23 Nov 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: I predict this tax will have little or no impact on the consumption of sugary drinks. I do not believe imposing additional costs on products such as these will reduce consumption any more than I believed increasing the costs of bin collection would reduce waste output. What is needed are alternatives that enable people to recycle. If recycling is promoted and recycling infrastructure is...

Finance Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) and Final Stage (23 Nov 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: There is such a database in France, for example. The aggregate figures are collected and various bodies collect figures on wealth distribution, for example, Credit Suisse. The survey on income and living conditions, SILC, report provided by the CSO has begun to give an assessment of the distribution of wealth, hence the figure which confirmed many of the other studies that were previously...

Finance Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) and Final Stage (23 Nov 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: We have had this debate often and we will have it again. A survey was carried out recently that showed that eight people out of ten in the country want to see a wealth tax. Therefore, the Minister might consider it, even in the interest of what the majority of people want. The people want it particularly because the level of household wealth has grown by 51% since the trough in 2013. The...

Finance Bill 2017: Report Stage (Resumed) (23 Nov 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: I wish to correct the record. I mentioned that I was talking to Mr. Gerard McSorley, who is a fine Irish actor, but I was actually talking about Mr. Sorley McCaughey of Christian Aid, who authored that good paper. The game is up on the "race to the bottom" role that Ireland has played. The noose is tightening. Frankly, it is about time the Government got with the programme. We can argue...

Finance Bill 2017: Report Stage (Resumed) (23 Nov 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Deputy Wallace has made most of the salient points already but Christian Aid - and Gerard McSorley, in particular, who phoned me recently to brief me on this - deserves a lot of credit for a very good paper exposing this new tax avoidance structure using the double taxation treaties between ourselves and Malta. I would just add two points on that. First, Mr. Eddie Hobbs phoned me recently....

Finance Bill 2017: Report Stage (Resumed) (23 Nov 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: The German playwright, Bertolt Brecht, stated that the crime of robbing a bank is absolutely nothing compared with the crime of owning one. Never was a truer word said when we consider what the banks have done and allowed to be done to the people of this country in recent years. The people of this country have paid a bitter price in the crash of the economy for the reckless gambling and...

Finance Bill 2017: Report Stage (Resumed) (23 Nov 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: The Government may fall over which Ministers knew what in connection with the emails in regard to Maurice McCabe and so on. This, in my opinion, is an even bigger scandal and, at the very least, it needs to be investigated. It is inexplicable that the then Minister, Deputy Noonan, in 2014 changed the tax code around intangible assets to essentially neutralise the impact of closing down the...

Finance Bill 2017: Report Stage (Resumed) (23 Nov 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Yes.

Finance Bill 2017: Report Stage (Resumed) (23 Nov 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: One of the things to which Seamus Coffey also alludes, which the Minister and everyone else knows, is that the value ascribed to these intangible assets, and the key is in the word "intangible", as in "we do not know", is ascribed by the company itself. That is what happens. The company gives these assets precisely the value that is necessary to ensure that it pays no tax. That is the way...

Finance Bill 2017: Report Stage (Resumed) (23 Nov 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: I move amendment No. 39:In page 41, between lines 35 and 36, to insert the following: "(3) The Minister shall, within 3 months of the passing of this Act, bring a report on the amount of tax revenue foregone as a result of the changes to capital allowances relating to intangible assets made in budget 2014 and the re-introduction of the 80 per cent cap in such allowances in Budget 2018, the...

Finance Bill 2017: Report Stage (Resumed) (23 Nov 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: It would also be helpful if he read the original speaking note again. What I heard disturbed me but we do not have the note in front of us to examine it.

Finance Bill 2017: Report Stage (Resumed) (23 Nov 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: That answer is in no way satisfactory. We do not have to hand the Minister's initial note in order to go through it. This is the problem which I raised yesterday and Deputy Burton has raised it again. We have amendments before us, which may be very substantial, that were not in the initial draft Bill but could have significant implications and we have not been given a proper explanatory...

Finance Bill 2017: Report Stage (Resumed) (23 Nov 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: If I understand the Minister correctly, what he says is a technical amendment is actually an amendment of very serious substance because we want retrospection. The Minister does not. We know that but when it comes to the section 110 tax break we absolutely want retrospection, as much of it as we can get because the section 110 tax break has been ruthlessly exploited by vulture funds to be,...

Finance Bill 2017: Report Stage (Resumed) (23 Nov 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: We were discussing an amendment where we propose to deal with the enormous loopholes being exploited by a small number of multinational companies to avoid tax by having a report produced on these loopholes, with the intent of closing them. That would give the people in this country billions of euro for housing, health and education, which we need so badly. The report would examine how a...