If the affair regarding the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, raises worrying and alarming questions about the relationship between politics and big business, the trip the Taoiseach will be taking to the World Economic Forum at Davos after Leaders' Questions, where he will spend a few days swanning around with some of the world's richest people and most profitable and wealthy corporations, also raises even bigger questions on a grander scale about the relationship between politics and the gross inequalities in wealth we see in this country and across the world.

Some very nasty, sinister and hateful forces on the far right want to blame the problems in our society on desperate and vulnerable refugees fleeing war and poverty. It may be better for them to focus on what is really the epitome of the problems we face in the world, that is, the world's billionaires and multinationals discussing the future of the world, particularly in light of the Oxfam report, which reveals the absolutely gross, grotesque and growing inequality that exists between the super rich in this country and across the world and the vast majority of people, who are crushed with the cost-of-living crisis and housing crisis and who are impacted by the crisis in our hospitals and in many of our public services. The facts revealed in the report are shocking. It states that the number of people in this country who have more than €50 million in personal wealth has doubled since 2012; the number of people worth nearly €5 million each has doubled in the same period and now comprises up to 20,000 people; the richest 1% of our population now have more than a quarter of all the wealth; and the richest 10% have more than 64% of all the wealth while the poorest 50% have just 1.1% of the wealth. These are grotesque and growing inequalities.

Will the Taoiseach now consider something we have called for a long time and that Oxfam is now calling for, which is the introduction of a wealth tax? Oxfam says that a modest tax on those who have wealth in excess of €4.7 million would raise more than €8 billion in extra revenue in one year.

Imagine what that would do to alleviate the crushing blows of the cost-of-living crisis, to address the housing crisis-----

I thank the Deputy.

-----and to resource our hospitals to deal with the dire crisis we are facing in our health services. Will the Government now introduce a wealth tax to start to redistribute some of the huge wealth that exists in this country but which is not being shared equally with the people of the country who generated this wealth?

I am sorry to disappoint the Deputy, but I will not be spending a few days in Davos. I will be there maybe for a day and a half. I have my responsibilities here and they take precedence. I will, therefore, only be there for about a day and a half. There is a busy programme of meetings and media engagements. The advantage of Davos, quite frankly, is that there are so many politicians, world leaders and business leaders in the one place for two or three days that it would be remiss not to be there. I will be able to have maybe ten or 15 meetings in the course of the next day and a half which would otherwise take weeks to organise. This is the advantage of the meeting. I know some people believe it is part of some form of world government and we are all going off there to make decisions on behalf of the elites that secretly run the world. I guarantee that if that was the case I would go for the whole thing, but I will not because I have other things to do.

Regarding the Deputy's question, we already have wealth taxes in Ireland. Our income tax system is regarded as being one of the most progressive in the world. Less than 1% of people here pay more than 20% of income tax. We have the local property tax, and the bigger and more valuable a person's property, the more property tax the person pays. Those who have modest properties pay modest amounts and those who have no property pay nothing at all. We also have a capital acquisitions tax. This is a tax on inheritance, for example, and gifts. Oxfam points out in its report that two thirds of countries have no inheritance tax at all if moneys are passed on to people's direct descendants. In Ireland, it is 33%. We also have a capital gains tax, which is a wealth tax on the share of businesses, property and shares, for example. Our tax there, again, is 33%, while the average across the world is only 18%. This gives a good example of the kind of wealth taxes that already exist in our country.

I did have a look at the report from Oxfam. It is interesting. I will look at it properly again when I have a bit more time. I do have two questions about the report, not for the Deputy but perhaps for others. One is around the methodology. Is it net wealth or gross wealth? We all know from past experience that some people who are billionaires on paper, or appear to be billionaires, are actually fur coat and no knickers. They have a lot of money and assets on paper, but they also have a lot of debts and liabilities and their actual net wealth is negative or small. It seems this report takes their gross wealth, and this would make it somewhat inaccurate to me. The second thing is that the report specifically refers to eight Irish billionaires. When we look at the names of those eight Irish billionaires, however, and most of them would be names that are familiar to me and the Deputy and most people in this House, most of them do not live here, do not have their business based here and do not keep their assets here. Why does the Deputy think this is? It is precisely because we have a tax regime that taxes wealth much more so than other countries.

Yes, the Taoiseach is right. There is no conspiracy; it is naked, brazen greed. The Taoiseach's answer does not explain how the number of people with more than €50 million or the number of people with up to €5 million in personal wealth has doubled. It does not explain how corporate profits have trebled in the last ten years while ordinary people are suffering. Let me give the Taoiseach an example, just one of dozens that I encountered over Christmas and the new year, of a woman and her husband with an income of €500 per week from invalidity pension and half carer's allowance. The husband has Alzheimer's disease. When they got a housing assistance payment, HAP, tenancy, he was working. Five years later, the rent has increased and those people now pay €275 a week of a contribution to rent from the €500 they have in total. They cannot make ends meet. Her rent was due on 13 January and she cannot pay. She has a gas bill of €700 unpaid and a new one to arrive later this month. Apparently, when she looked for an exceptional needs payment, she was told "No" because she had received two payments last year. This is the reality that ordinary people are facing. What Oxfam pointed out was that the gross and growing inequality in wealth had a lot to do with what it called "greedflation", profiteering by big corporations-----

I thank the Deputy. His time is up.

-----taking advantage of the cost-of-living crisis to enrich themselves at the expense of families like this.

Would a wealth tax not be a way to address that gross inequality?

When it comes to that €50 million figure, I wonder is that a gross wealth figure or is it a net wealth figure and how did Oxfam know how much people owe, what their debts are and what their assets are.

It is in the Central Bank report.

I would wonder about the accuracy of that and whether or not it is gross wealth or net wealth.

One thing the Deputy is right about is we have seen a major increase in corporate profits around the world and Ireland in recent years and as a consequence of that, we in Ireland have benefited from massive receipts in corporation profit tax from those companies.

That family is not benefiting.

On a per-head basis, we get more in in corporation profit tax than almost any other country in Europe. Only Luxembourg is maybe up there, with one or two others. Our low-tax regime on corporations means that we taken in billions of euro more than other countries do. That is money we use to help people, such as the people the Deputy mentioned, with the €600 energy credit that the person the Deputy mentioned will benefit from being taken off their bills, the increases in welfare payments of €12 a week kicking in this month-----

Paying their gas bill.

-----the reductions in income tax kicking in this month and the 25% reduction in childcare costs kicking in this month.

I thank the Taoiseach.

I could go on. Provided we continue to encourage enterprise and tax it, we will have the funds to do more.