Union backs attack on ‘parasites’

THE country’s biggest trade union SIPTU yesterday came out in support of the small firms’ attack on businessmen who live overseas to avoid tax.

SIPTU general president Jack O’Connor said his union had been campaigning for the rich and famous to pay their share of taxes from the early 1990s.

The Small Firms Association was coming from behind on this, but Mr O’Connor said he welcomed the late conversion of the SFA is this regard. And he said he fully endorsed the criticisms by chairman Kieran Crowley earlier this week.

SIPTU is aware that the tax burden has been shifted over the past six years on to the consumer in the form of indirect taxation.

And it was totally unacceptable that loopholes in tax laws are there to facilitate those he described as the “parasites and leeches of this society.”

One of the key targets of the criticism by the SFA, and now by SIPTU, is Denis O’Brien, under investigation by the Moriarty Tribunal in relation to his success in winning the second mobile phone licence.

As a result of the sale of the franchise, Mr O’Brien became a multi-millionaire when he sold Esat to BT for E2.3 billion, which netted him close to E300m.

Prior to the sale, Mr O’Brien had moved residence to Portugal, saving an estimated E55m as a result.

Reacting to the backlash in particular from the Small Firms Association, Mr O’Brien said: “I think people are too negative towards politicians, government and entrepreneurs.”

In an interview yesterday, Mr O’Brien, who made his wealth here, said he was happier living outside Ireland because “there is too much shite going on inside Ireland at the moment.”

He opined that this country was becoming a “communist State” and he was happy to be outside it.

However, Mr Crowley of the SFA was not on a communist agenda when he said it was unjustified that big gainers from this economy, who netted close to E300m from the sale of Esat alone, could walk away from any tax obligations due to loopholes in the tax laws.

Mr Crowley said the SFA, in the light of what has been going on here by the likes of Mr O’Brien, will be pointing out the “disproportion and lack of equity in the current tax regime.”

By comparison, small firms have been going to the wall in the hundreds due to excessive charges, ranging from local government charges to spiralling insurance costs, he said. SIPTU’S Jack O’Connor agrees. “It was totally unacceptable that the rich can make millions without paying a penny while small firms and those working for them are having their best efforts thrown back in their faces due to the total inequity of the tax laws and the general business climate in this country,” he said.