Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2016-09-14-Speech-3-477-000"
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"en.20160914.32.3-477-000"2
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"Madam President, I’ve stood in this Chamber on countless occasions to defend the rights of national parliaments to set their own tax rates, and I do so again today. Sinn Féin will always defend Ireland’s sovereignty, as we have on every occasion when it’s been attacked by the European Commission, including on taxation matters, but this ruling is not one of those occasions.
I’m sure you, Commissioner, and many of your fellow federalists in this room are scratching their heads wondering what’s happened to your best friends in the Irish political establishment. The people who the EU could always depend on. When the Commission said jump to a savage austerity agenda, they simply asked ‘how harsh?’. When the EU said EUR 64 billion and private bank debt should be placed on the shoulders of the Irish people or when you demanded new water or property taxes, your friends in Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil quickly capitulated. When you proposed trade deals with investment courts that would do more to undermine sovereignty than any Commission ruling, your Irish friends proudly say ‘we’ll champion that for you’.
But today, the Commission’s bodies in Ireland are fighting back. Not in the interests, though, of the Irish people or the Irish economy, but in the interests of the wealthiest corporations in the world and our global web of tax avoidance. This ruling has no effect whatsoever on our tax rate or our ability to attract inward investment or to create jobs. Any investors seeking to remain in, or come to, Ireland can be assured of a talented workforce and a 12.5% corporate tax rate that we will protect; they just won’t be assured any longer of sweetheart deals that would allow them to dodge billions of euros in tax. The announced appeal is morally wrong, politically dishonest and economically stupid. We have a housing and health crisis in Ireland. Many of our public services are savagely underfunded. EUR 13 billion, or even a fraction of it, could help solve those problems. Rather than spending Irish taxpayers’ money on this appeal, our government should instead be restoring our international reputation by ensuring that Ireland will never again be part of the international tax avoidance racket."@en1
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