Gerald Nash (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. The annual Finance Bill is the landmark event for Government each year. I said that at the budget. This Bill gives effect to the policy and ambition of any Government in any given year. It enables the Government to give effect to its policies and, in a broader sense, outline its philosophy and principles. In reality, it is very difficult to discern any central theme in this budget. In truth, it is fair to say that it scares nobody and excites even fewer. I suspect that after a few very torrid years, that is something we would probably consider a virtue.

The Bill is a product of our political times where this Government is in an arrangement with Fianna Fáil and the Independent Alliance. There is enough for Fianna Fáil to support broadly at this point and nothing of any real note from the Independent Alliance. Jobs; sustainable, broad and balanced revenue-raising mechanisms; and the need to extract more from a more transparent and effective corporation tax collecting system should be the threads binding this Bill together. We are all very satisfied to see the live register tumbling. Every new job is a life back on track, a family situation improved, a family better off and a community gradually becoming better off. The biggest threat to this State reaching the Holy Grail of full employment is the threat of Brexit, as was pointed out by Senator Horkan. I am taken aback by the paucity of any new measures and innovations in the Bill to anticipate and counter the effects of at least the things we already know with some clarity and certainty about the impact of the UK voting to leave the EU.

Where lies the commitment of the Government through the programme for Government to progressively increase the national minimum wage to €10.50 over the lifetime of this Oireachtas? At the rate of increase proposed by the Minister on budget day, having been proposed by the Low Pay Commission, it will take 15 years for the Government to reach its own target of €10.50. I draw the Minister's attention to a very recent report by the Low Pay Commission in the UK, which made it clear that the Tory Government's ambition to reach a national living wage will not impact in any way on levels of job creation and sustainability. I have said time and again that all the available research relating to statutory minimum wage rates across the world concludes that small, incremental and predictable increases to national minimum wage rates do no harm to job creation. We could say with some certainty that any claims to the contrary are simply ideological positions that are dressed up as fears for the functioning of an economy.

The Minister knows only too well that one of the key measures of national and international tax systems is the idea of equity and fairness. Our corporation tax system has been under considerable scrutiny in recent times. We should never lose sight of the fact that it is up to us as a sovereign nation to set our own rate of corporation tax - a rate that works for us and that can be deployed in terms of our industrial strategy. I acknowledge that as a State, we have moved very quickly in terms of the base erosion and profit shifting, BEPS, process, in which I played a role as a member of the previous Government. However, we need to heed the words of people like Deputy Joan Burton and others when they say that our corporation tax rate of 12.5% must always mean 12.5% so we need to be very clear about minimum effective rates of corporation tax collection if people are to have confidence in the system. This is why section 54 of the Bill needs to be amended in respect of bringing the date forward for addressing the issues the Minister hopes to address in terms of offshoring and so on.