Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I agree completely with Senator O'Toole. I hope the Taoiseach's comments are translated into legislation because I am certain that there are seven or eight countries in Europe where one could not do what is being done. Let us not hide behind the European Union. I am certain that in Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway, Irish Ferries could not do this by law and yet those countries all run efficient ferry services.

Perhaps what Senator O'Toole said is just another manifestation of something that leaps out of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report. In the area of taxation, according to the report, there were six convictions in the year reviewed. In the same year, 36 people went to jail for social welfare fraud, 144 people were fined, 43 received the benefit of the Probation Act, while social welfare fraud totalled €18 million. In the same year, six people were convicted for tax offences but the Comptroller and Auditor General does not have the details of the penalties, so we can assume none of them was too severe. In the same year, €172 million in tax was written off, representing 26,000 different cases. Some of that money was income tax, but some of it was VAT, which is essentially money that someone stole from a customer, pretended that he or she was paying VAT and then kept if for himself or herself. It was then written off because the company went bankrupt or whatever. The Revenue Commissioners are often correct to write these things off, but it is inexcusable that someone can fiddle VAT, see his or her company go bankrupt and then pay nothing, yet is not prosecuted for what is clearly a fraudulent transaction between that person and his or her customers.

Why is it that so few people are prosecuted for any tax offence in a year when 36 people went to jail for a maximum of €18 million? This is the difference between the rich and the poor. In the companies that find ways to exploit workers, as Senator O'Toole pointed out, there are directors who are rewarding themselves with increases well above what even the most outrageous trade unionist would ever hope for. These increases can be up in the order of 10% to 15% per annum and are voted to them by other directors who are meant to be independent, but are all part of the cosy circle which looks after Irish business. People who are in each other's companies do the remuneration for one company and receive the remuneration for another. As long as we allow that sort of inequality, manifested in the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and in the Irish Ferries affair, I am sceptical that genuine partnership exists. Until I see the law applying equally to the rich and to the poor, to the powerful and to the powerless, we do not really have the sort of partnership to which I would aspire.