PBP proposes tax on millionaires, corporation tax hike

People Before Profit is proposing a new tax on multimillionaires as well as increasing the corporation tax to 20% as part of its alternative budget package.

The document - entitled A Radical Budget for an Affordable Ireland - also proposes a €500 electricity credit for every household funded by a levy on data centres.

TD Richard Boyd Barrett said taxing wealth and businesses would raise an additional €45bn to go towards tackling the cost-of-living and housing crises.

"The idea of taxing wealth and big business in order to address the cost of living and housing misery is an idea whose time has come.

"If we make the multimillionaires and the big corporations and the energy companies and the data centers pay some additional taxes, we can protect people from the housing misery, from the cost-of-living misery," Mr Boyd Barrett said.

His party colleague, TD Paul Murphy said the Irish people should not accept being "held hostage to the demands of US corporations that are using Ireland as a conduit to a corporate tax haven".

"I don't think there's another party that is willing to say that Ireland is a corporate tax haven, which it is, and we're all expected to believe these tremendous figures of productivity from workers in the multinational sector because profits are being funneled from elsewhere and artificially said to be here, at one point or another this is going to end," he added.

Amongst other measures proposed by the party include a 10% pay increase to public sector workers, raise disability payments to €350 per week and an additional €55 per week cost of disability payment.

People Before Profit also want to abolish fees for third-level education and childcare, as well as the purchase of 500 additional electric buses.

In regard to housing, the party wants to triple spending on public housing and repurpose the Land Development Agency as a State construction company.