Tax from State-assisted companies should be used for education - President

President Michael D Higgins has urged tax derived from employers that receive benefits from State investments to be used to fund greater spending on education.

Opening the Irish Congress of Trade Unions biennial conference in Belfast, he said it was public investment that created the infrastructure "for the many corporate entries into the market in so many areas".

“The State’s role in taking and undergirding long-term risk is in stark contrast with the pressure put on governments to eliminate risk for those who are interested in simply short-term gains. Again, one might ask is it not a noble aspiration that every child, girl or boy, would be able to have access to all such education as is necessary for their human development. “

“If this be so, should the State that provides such opportunity not unreasonably expect that the early tax yield in such employment as is made possible by State-assisted qualification should accrue to the providing State, so as to enable its yield to be recycled and create the capacity of universal education ever-more high-class skills? “

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The President said if this was not done was it not creating an intellectual subsidy to other economies.

However, he told the conference this was a speculative opinion of his own.

Mr Higgins, in his address to the conference, also said the day for arguing in the media for the “minimal State “ was over.

He said the trade union movement would be crucial in restoring a recognition of the role of the State in partnership with private investment and civil society. “Exposing the myth that only the private sector takes risks and that the State cannot ever take, or does not, take risks, is extremely important. It acquires an even greater importance as decisions have to be taken in relation to science, technology, research and development policy.”

‘Social pillar’

The President also criticised a proposed new European policy to enhance worker protection, as it did not include a social, economic and cultural rights perspective.

He said the so-called "social pillar" which the president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker is seeking to have signed off at the highest level before the end of the year would be of immense importance.

"This initiative, which it is suggested will deal with issues of cohesion, upskilling, reduction of inequality and related poverty, would be all the more effective if it incorporated a social, economic and cultural rights perspective, resisted until now by the Council of Ministers of the European Union and those who advise them."

Mr Higgins said it was unfortunate that Mr Juncker had opted “to describe its putative success as requiring it to have a triple-A rating”.

“ That phrase is one that will resonate with all those who remember the dishonesty and the fraud associated with such a phrase and which visited such devastation on so many people in so many countries.”

The President said the trade union movement faced a number of new challenges.

Powerful myths

He said to do so would involve “revealing and challenging some powerful myths that have been established, without empirical evidence, in an era of concentration of ownership in media, decline in public service broadcasting, and an anti-intellectualism that serves those who hold unaccountable power as much as it prevents workers knowing the basis for policy choices that affect our lives.”