Finance Bill 2025 [Certified Money Bill]: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-09
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Conor Murphy (SF), Industrial and Commercial Panel

I fully agree with the business of attracting foreign direct investment and skilled workers. I spent my previous post as Minister for the Economy North of the Border doing exactly that. However, what we also need in the system is fairness. We need to ensure that people who are from this country, who work here and who live on the bread line now with the cost-of-living crisis also experience a benefit from this. This is a clear opportunity for a fairer taxation approach which would benefit all people who work here, not just those who are in the high-earning category. People who earn up to €1 million are not in need of further tax breaks. We have a lot of people who are struggling to meet their everyday bills, have had energy credits removed from them, and have seen increases in price on fuel, groceries and rent. All of these challenges are affecting quite a lot of families. This particular section is blind to all of that, as is the Finance Bill as a proposition generally. I have no issue with people being attracted in who will generate wealth, but trickle-down economics is a theory that has been proved to be disastrously wrong. The Government has responsibility for ensuring there is fairness in the financial and taxation systems to give everybody a break.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-12-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:26+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-09