Taoiseach's Communications
Dail Éireann — 2020-11-11
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Paul Murphy (PBP), Dublin South-West

In his call with President-elect Biden yesterday, did the Taoiseach discuss corporate tax avoidance? Last year it was reported that, if elected, Mr. Joe Biden was planning to impose sanctions on the State because the Government facilitated "illegal corporate tax avoidance and [engages] in harmful tax competition". In the Biden plans, Ireland was listed alongside the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. Does the Taoiseach agree that the State has been operating as a tax haven for big businesses as part of a chain of global tax avoidance and that this must stop? Not only is it deeply immoral, given the robbery of hundreds of billions of euro from some of the poorest countries in the world as well as from workers in this country, it is unsustainable, as illustrated by Mr. Biden's declared plans during the election and the fact that Ireland is not the only country that can engage in a race to the bottom in terms of corporation tax rates. Ireland can be beaten in that race by others. The only victors will be the corporations, which have seen the amount of corporation tax they pay halved over the past 20 years or so.
Is it not time to stand up to the tax dodgers, tax their massive profits and use that wealth to invest in a socialist green new deal that creates decent, sustainable jobs and to rebuild our society and economy in a socialist direction?

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2020-11-11/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:46+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-11-11