Seamus Coffey

I have trouble with this word windfall, which is often used because, and look, lots of people have done good analysis.

Seamus Coffey's done excellent analysis on slicing and dicing it over the last number of years.

But if you look at in its simplest terms, if you look at corporation tax versus, say, S&P 500 profits or against the profits of the NASDAQ, ours has gone up a bit more than those profits over recent years, but not by a lot more.

I think it's something like five times over the last 10 years for ours versus NASDAQ might be three times or more.

But let me explain the choice of the word deteriorate.

We are getting a higher tax take than ever, but since about €35 odd billion is in the form of corporation tax and it's deemed windfall, Seamus Coffey is pointing out that the government is spending €7 in every €8 of corporation tax collected.

So that's why the underlying deficit between taxes like income and VAT with spending is widening.

And to give further context to that, the deficit was €800 million in 2019.

But given the year that we've been and we've seen the effects of climate change, is there anything that we should be doing at the moment to update our practices? So that would be my conversation with Anna Brown later on.

But first things first, I'm delighted now to be joined by the chairperson of the Climate Change Advisory Council, Alex White.

You are very welcome to Let's Go Green.

Very nice to be with you, Ashley.

But the OECD is suggesting that the houses of the Oireachtas, i.e. the Dáil and the Seannacht, would have a greater role there.

Now, it'd be interesting to see exactly what they mean by that.

But in response to this report, the chairperson of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, Seamus Coffey, has welcomed the report and says that it's great, you know, welcomes the fact that the OECD says the council ranks among the best performing fiscal councils in the OECD area.

and that it has helped improve the understanding of public finances in Ireland However, he says it confirms what we've known for some time that our mandate has grown but the budget has not and that that reduced the size of the team and hit our long-term work and he says that he hopes the government passes legislation that was promised back in 2021 soon and that he looks forward to building on the review's recommendations.