In the past ten days or so, I raised with the Taoiseach the issue of the attempt by Coillte, the State forestry company, to sell off Killegar forest in Enniskerry. Despite-----

We have done well. I am glad to say I got a call from Coillte yesterday informing me it had decided to abandon the sale. Coillte tried to suggest that the sale was not finalised. I will inform the House that there were for sale signs all around the forest when I went there. Killegar forest was being advertised on an estate agent's website so Coillte had planned to sell it. Intervention and public outcry stopped it. When Coillte phoned me, I was told it was considering selling because access problems were impeding t…

The Taoiseach should look at Coillte's mandate in that regard.

Against what?

I am against carbon tax-----

-----on people. Put it on the corporations.

Tax the data centres.

Tax the data centres.

I thought the Taoiseach said I must have done a good leaving certificate.

The United Nations conference at Rio de Janeiro, among other things, developed a set of principles known as the forest principles, which relate to how important forestry is in combating climate change and biodiversity destruction. The Taoiseach and others attended the UN-convened COP26 and the Taoiseach was at an environmental session in New York where he discussed the issue of climate. Forestry is key in this, as has been said on a number of occasions. Last week, I raised with the Taoiseach the issue of the public…

Has the Taoiseach looked into the matter? Does he believe there needs to be a role for greater oversight of the sale of public forest land by the State forestry company?

During the past decade, corporate profits here have gone through the roof. I estimate there has been an increase of approximately 127% in corporate profits. Last year, net household wealth increased by €89 billion to a record €883 billion and more than 50% of that is in the hands of the richest 10% of the population. In the interests of justice, fairness and equity and to provide funds for public services and infrastructure, is it not time to introduce wealth taxes?

The Minister has just confirmed correctly, although he said it has reduced slightly, that the richest 10% of our population owns more than 50% of all the wealth in a study to which he referred. People need to understand how much that is. Net household wealth, according to the Central Bank report, is €883 billion. That means the richest 10% have €440 billion in personal wealth. The Minister said that is tied up in the family home. Our wealth tax proposal explicitly excludes the family home. There are 160,000 people …

We are not in favour of taxing the family home in our wealth tax proposal. We are very explicit. We are in favour of taxing the wealth in excess of €1 million in the hands of a small group of people. I will put it another way to the Minister. We have approximately 2 million workers, and the Minister can confirm the numbers. Last year, between them they earned €130 billion but they paid €27 billion in tax. The corporations earned €203 billion in pre-tax profits and paid €11 billion in tax. In other words, the corpor…

Growing public outrage and international pressure has finally forced some moves towards having a minimum effective corporate tax rate to deal with the phenomenon of aggressive tax avoidance by some of the wealthiest corporations in the world. Although the Government resisted quite hotly, it has now agreed to an effective rate of 15%. Will it actually be an effective rate, because the 12.5% was not effective, and these companies utilise loopholes in the tax code to avoid paying their fair share of tax?

The Revenue figures to which the Minister refers, which I have in front of me, do not say what he just said. What they say for 2019 is that there was €195 billion worth of pre-tax profits, before deductions and allowances, and that €10 billion was paid on that. That is not 10% or anything like it, it is 5.6%. The reason the Minister can claim that it is 10% is because about €84 billion of their pre-tax profits are not taxed at all because they benefit from deductions, allowances and reliefs. It is in that area that…

I want to pre-empt what will probably be the Minister's final comment by saying we value the jobs these companies bring to this country. They do create employment and we want those jobs here. That does not mean they cannot pay their fair share of tax. Revenue figures show the major reliefs and allowances they benefit from are intragroup transactions worth €16 billion in 2019 as a cost to the Exchequer. They are from amalgamations, losses brought forward and other reliefs like that, not research and development. I r…

That is what is recognised by the Minister.

I thank the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission for an excellent report. It puts flesh on the bones and summarises what a lot of Deputies face weekly in our clinics. A disproportionate number of those who come in to our clinics in serious trouble on housing are single mothers and people with disabilities whose needs are not being not met. We get some members of the new communities, often with bigger families, coming in whose needs are not being met. They are also disproportionately represented among the home…

I thank Deputy Harkin for bringing forward this Bill, which we are very happy to support. When the for-profit banking system drove this economy over a cliff, along with its developer friends, the Government moved heaven and earth to prop it up. Emergency legislation was flowing like confetti. It involved late-night sittings, huge urgency and €60 billion to keep them going. As for how they thank us, Ulster Bank, although not a beneficiary of the bailout, it got bailed out elsewhere, is upping and leaving, and the ot…