Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

And George Best, absolutely.

The second issue I raise is altogether different. A very serious report by the Tax Justice Network, which has not received much attention since it was published last week, has shown that Ireland is one of the biggest tax havens in the world, costing other countries, including some of the poorest countries in the world, almost $16 billion, that is, €13.5 billion in lost revenues each year. The only countries ranked worse than Ireland in the overall rankings were the Cayman Islands, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, the United States, Hong Kong, China and the British Virgin Islands. In corporate tax evasion alone Ireland was ranked as the 11th worst in the world and the fifth worst in Europe. It scored a haven score of 76 out of 100, with 100 being the worst. This was the first study to thoroughly measure how much every country loses to both corporate tax abuse and private tax evasion.

Interestingly, the report also showed that this country suffers a loss of €14.5 billion each year due to global tax abuse. Just €199 million of that is attributed to corporations, the rest is to private individuals. That would account for a loss of over $3,000 for every member of the population. We need an honest conversation about tax and tax justice and we need to be internationalists when it comes to tax justice and I ask for a debate on that topic.