Kieran Coughlan: Good news for farmers if Government plans to end discriminatory taxes

At a recent IBEC conference, Taoiseach Enda Kenny signalled his intentions to change our tax system and — as he put it — “to end the discriminatory tax treatment of self-employed people inherited by this Government”.

This is great news for farmers, who are by far the largest cohort of self- employed persons in Ireland.

Creating employment in Ireland has for two generations been almost exclusively focused on winning foreign direct investment (FDI), mainly from US multinationals which use Ireland as a springboard for expansion into Europe.