Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail)

From listening to Opposition comments and reading the Minister's speech, there seems to be a clear dichotomy between perception and reality. Anyone reading this would have the living daylights scared out of them. I will quote the specific figure into the record. As the Minister has stated, the overall tax debt is 2.5%, down from 30% in 1989. We are second in a list of the top 22 countries, including several individual American states where tax compliance is very high, as well as wealthy countries such as Sweden.

When I was living in England under old Labour, the perception was that if one voted in the Labour Party, money would flee the country, while if one voted in the Tories, that would generate economic growth. I remember very well that Neil Kinnock publicly stated at a time when the highest rate of tax was approximately 98p in the pound there, and approximately 65p or 70p here, that anyone who paid so much was mad. He was the leader of the Labour Party and a putative Prime Minister. Whenever we talk about tax evasion and avoidance, we seem to forget the context in which this all happened. We had punitive rates of tax in this country, and the tax burden has been significantly reduced, with most of the change occurring during the lifetime of this Government. We now have the lowest tax regime in Europe. People can argue around that statistic, but it is a fact. They now have far more choice over how they spend their money than ever before, something true in comparison with citizens of other EU countries and beyond.

This motion is in two parts. On the one hand it is about social welfare fraud, which is totally separate from Revenue investigations. I came to the conclusion that it was a little like why the United States holds on to the death penalty. It is not about justice or fair play but about revenge. The view is that one should go after those people with all the money — all those multi-millionaires and billionaires. It is seen as disgraceful and outrageous that they have made all that money and are now trying to diddle the country out of its tax revenue.