A RAFT of measures to attract foreign investment will form a core part of the Finance Bill, which is scheduled to be published on Wednesday.
The Bill includes several of the measures announced by Minister for Finance Michael Noonan when unveiling Budget 2012 on December 5th, all designed to improve Ireland’s ability to attract foreign investment. The Finance Bill also gives statutory effect to budget-day changes announced by the Minister.
A Government spokesman said there would not be many surprises in the legislation, with no major provisions included that were not already in the budget or already indicated by the Government.
In the past, governments have used finance Bills to introduce major policy changes or exemptions not mentioned in budgets.
The Bill will include provisions to allow special assignee relief, a change that will make it more attractive for foreign companies to transfer employees to Ireland.
Similarly, the foreign-earning deduction, which incentivises Irish companies to market abroad, will also be included. There will also be several measures in the international financial services area, including supports for international funds, corporate treasury, international insurance, and aircraft leasing. The Bill will also give effect to changes in stamp duty; capital gains tax; VAT, capital acquisitions tax and stock relief.
It comes as Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin has written to the chairmen of all the Oireachtas committees outlining how the process of drawing up the budgetary process has changed.
In a letter sent at the weekend, Mr Howlin said every department had been allotted an “expenditure ceiling” for 2013. He asked the committees to engage with each Minister to explain how they would meet those targets.
In an RTÉ interview yesterday, Taoiseach Enda Kenny said the increase of 6,000 in the number of people at work in the last quarter of 2011 represented a solid start for the Government in its first year, but there was a long way to go.
"This Government is in an unprecedented position. Nobody likes to make tough choices but we have to sort out our own financial problems here. If we never had a crisis in the euro zone or global turmoil, we still have a situation where we are spending between €16 to €18 billion more than we are taking in," he told the This Weekprogramme on RTÉ Radio 1.
Asked about the Government’s promise to create 100,000 jobs by the end of 2016, he maintained it was possible but accepted there was an element of guesswork in arriving at the estimates. He said it was possible to create 10,000 new jobs in the financial sector.
The Taoiseach also said the estimated 5,000 departures from the public sector by the end of this month under the incentivised retirement deal would test the flexibility of the Cork Park agreement.
“I want to see it [the agreement] honoured . . . It’s not all down to trade unions. It’s also down to managers having clear and specific plans, in every hospital, in every sector of the public service,” he said.
Mr Kenny indicated that after February, it would become important to deal with absenteeism of 5,000 a day in the HSE and the question of rosters in that sector.