With the general election just around the corner, politicians and canvassers will be pounding the streets between now and 8th of February to persuade members of the public to pledge to give them their No.1 on the ballot paper. You can be guaranteed that over the coming days, a local politician, or an enthusiastic canvasser eager to share the attributes of the individual they’re representing, will call to your home.
For weeks you’ve had a list of carefully formulated questions in your head. Yet as you open the door to greet your local TD, councillor, potential political newcomer or canvasser, those questions are likely to evaporate.
So we've created a handy downloadable list of questions on some of the biggest global issues of our time:
Climate change
Unsustainable consumerism
Gender inequality and the burden of the care economy, which is mostly carried by women and girls
The global corporate tax system which hits the poor the hardest
You can download the list and store it on your phone – or print off a hard copy and pop it up on the wall next to your front door. That way, when a politician or canvasser calls round, you have all the questions you need at your fingertips.
Questions for election candidates - for people and planet
Climate change
How are you going to tackle the climate crisis, including ensuring we reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 8% every year?
And how are you going to support people in poorer countries who are already feeling its devastating effects?
Sustainability
How will you work to make Ireland more sustainable, including by developing the circular economy which eliminates waste and helps protect our most precious resources?
Gender inequality and the care economy
What are your plans to tackle gender inequality?
And how do you plan to better value and invest in unpaid care work? Including tackling the disproportionate impact it has on women?
The global corporate tax system
Will you help overhaul the global corporate tax system which allows large multinational companies to avoid paying their fair share of tax and deprives countries, especially the world's poorest, of vital revenue?
This month the European Union (EU) put the thorny issue of how to fairly tax the digital economy on the long finger. Attempts to reform digital taxation, like efforts to increase public tax transparency and address profit shifting, have stalled at the EU due to opposition from a small number of countries – including Ireland.
Oxfam International’s Executive Director Winnie Byanyimaat the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year, where she debated Ireland’s Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe on the need for fundamental reform of the global tax system. Photo: World Economic Forum
This month the European Union (EU) put the thorny issue of how to fairly tax the digital economy on the long finger. Attempts to reform digital taxation, like efforts to increase public tax transparency and address profit shifting, have stalled at the EU due to opposition from a small number of countries – including Ireland.
The proposed digital services tax was an imperfect solution. Experts and civil society agree that the real solution lies in fundamentally changing our tax system to meet the challenges of a digitalised economy. This is about more than just a handful of big tech firms dominating the market. Technology is fundamentally changing the way that every industry operates and our tax system must adapt to reflect this.
This is worth considering in the context of developing countries in Africa, where Ireland spends most of its overseas development aid. Africa has often been hailed as a technological leapfrogger, particularly in the realm of mobile banking, where Kenya’s M-PESA is leading the way. Sub-Saharan Africa is now a bigger market for mobile phones than North America and it will shortly surpass Europe. Tech companies based in Ireland like Apple are cashing in on this growing market – in 2015, sales of the iPhone grew by 133 percent in the Middle East and Africa. But African tax revenues are not benefitting from this boom because profits from these sales are routed back to Apple in Cork.
The EU has had more success in tackling tax havens. Last year, in an assertive move against the ever-increasing power of multinationals and private billionaires, it published its first ever blacklist of tax havens. As a result of this pressure, many notorious tax havens committed to reform their tax laws before the end of 2018, and companies started moving away from tropical zero-tax islands.
However, if the blacklist is to remain an important tool in the fight against tax avoidance, the EU must follow up on its initial action. A preliminary analysis by Oxfam shows that, with just one month left to the deadline, at least 20 countries – including heavyweights like Switzerland – have failed to deliver sufficient reforms and could soon be blacklisted.
It is crucial that EU governments help end the era of tax havens to ensure that the billions of dollars currently hidden from public coffers are spent on services which matter to citizens – health, education, infrastructure and development. The economist Gabriel Zucman estimates that multinational companies shift as much as 40 percent of their global profits to tax havens every year. Not only does this affect governments and citizens across the EU, it also hits developing countries who lose $100 billion annually as a result of tax avoidance- fueling inequality and poverty.
So how successful has the EU’s blacklist actually been? Has it helped or hindered the fight against inequality?
The blacklist started last December with 17 tax havens. Since then, the number has dwindled to a mere five countries, all of which are small island states. However, at the same time, a ‘grey list’ of countries that committed to reform their tax systems by the end of 2018 has grown. It features many of the most disreputable tax havens, such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, and has already had some positive results exemplified by the removal of Liechtenstein from the list after it ended its damaging tax practices.
The Tax Haven Shuffle
The blacklisting process has produced changes in the way multinationals are operating. Big companies are beginning to move from tropical islands where they pay no tax, to countries where they pay extremely low tax. As reported in Bloomberg, US multinationals are moving their intellectual property (IP) holdings (patents, trademarks, copyrights etc.) from territories like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands to countries like Ireland and Singapore. This trend is known as “onshoring”, or “the tax haven shuffle”, and it happens when zero-tax islands change their tax regimes in response to external trends – in this case following pressure on tax havens from the EU.
Ireland has incentivised companies to relocate their IP here with reliefs that allow them – in many cases – to reduce their tax liability down to zero percent, replicating what used to happen in Caribbean tax havens. From 1 January 2015 – just after the announcement of the phasing out of the Double Irish arrangement – companies were allowed to offset up to 100 percent of their profits (it was previously capped at 80 percent) against the cost of purchasing IP rights for the relevant period – potentially eliminating any tax bill whatsoever. There has been a sharp uptake in companies availing of this measure, as recognised by the former finance minister Michael Noonan. Deputy Noonan highlighted “a relocation of intellectual property-related assets or patents to Ireland” as a key reason for Ireland’s massive GDP increase of 26% in 2015. Figures released by Irish revenue authorities show that the use of such allowances for intangible assets went up by a massive 989 percent in 2015. The full extent of these transfers were discussed recently in the Irish parliament where it was disclosed that between 2014 and 2017, intellectual property to the value of approximately €300 billion was onshored to Ireland. The law was changed in 2017 so that companies that transfer IP to Ireland after this date will only be able to claim 80 percent relief against profits in any one year.
In his blog, Chair of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, Seamus Coffey, estimates that significantly more intellectual property could be transferred to Ireland. Based on the current figure of €70 billion of royalties leaving Ireland annually, he estimates that up to €1 trillion in IP assets could be transferred to Ireland in the next few years. For companies that moved IP here between 2015 and 2017, Ireland may be, in effect, a “no-tax jurisdiction”, with potentially hundreds of billions of euros of reliefs still to be used against future profits. Meanwhile, companies that move IP to Ireland in the future will be able to avail of reliefs that could potentially allow them to have an effective tax rate of as low as 2.5 percent.
Could we see real reform in 2019?
It is true that coordinated efforts at EU, OECD, G20 and UN level are making it more difficult for individual countries to continue to facilitate corporate tax avoidance. In response, countries are more likely to compete for foreign investment by offering ever more generous tax incentives – Ireland’s intellectual property relief being one example – and reductions in their corporate tax rates. This competition is creating a race to the bottom, whereby a small number of countries may temporarily gain in the short term. In the long term, however, every country risks losing out as extreme competitive pressures negatively impact their sovereign right to raise fair levels of tax.
So even if we are successful at reducing – or eliminating – corporate tax avoidance, there is a danger that this race to the bottom will lead to a situation where corporations start reporting the correct amount of profits in each country, but still pay very little taxes on these profits. This has serious implications for poorer countries’ ability to mobilise sufficient domestic revenue to fund universal public services to tackle inequality and beat poverty, and to fund the social and physical infrastructure that fosters prosperity. As women and girls living in poverty are disproportionally impacted by the under-resourcing of public services, this has also implications for efforts to address gender inequality because developing countries need to be able to raise the vital resources necessary for the advancement of women’s civil, social and economic rights.
Efforts to reform the global tax system move to the OECD in 2019, a move which Ireland supports. However, this may be a case of “be careful what you wish for” as it seems that a more fundamental reform of the corporate tax system – including the possible introduction of a minimum effective tax rate – may be on the negotiating table at the OECD next year. In a recent interview, Pascal Saint-Amans, director of the OECD’s Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, indicated that he felt that momentum is building for something big to happen, a kind of BEPS 2.0, which would look at more systematic issues such as the allocation of taxing rights, rather than trying to patch up the existing flawed system, as has happened under the original Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Process (BEPS) process.
The Japanese G20 presidency has also signalled its strong interest in continuing the debate on taxing the digital economy and will hold a tax symposium on the subject in early June 2019 to coincide with the G20 finance ministers’ meeting in Fukuoka. Unlike the original BEPS negotiating agreement, the global south will have some input, albeit limited, into these negotiations through the OECD’s Inclusive Framework. As rising powers like Brazil, India and China have all signalled that more complete reform is necessary, and with the US more open to a global minimum effective tax rate following its recent tax reforms, Ireland’s ability to block reform may be greatly reduced this time around.
As well as Oxfam’s local shops throughout the island of Ireland selling donated books, we also have five dedicated Oxfam Books stores bursting with must-reads and covering all genres: Rathmines and Parliament Street in Dublin; Ann Street and Botanic Avenue in Belfast; and French Church Street in Cork.
We hear from our retail team, who are ready to help you source a bargain from the varied range of book titles available while you are in-store.
Oxfam Ireland’s Head of Retail Michael McIlwaine
Book shops are special places and Oxfam is extra special, because every book donated and purchased in-store means a positive change in the life of someone who really needs it overseas.
Oxfam shops are so familiar on our high streets that it's easy to forget how much good they do. By buying and donating books, CDs and DVDs and other goods, you are helping raise vital funds for Oxfam’s work from emergency responses to long-term development programmes.
If you spend just €5/£5 on books in an Oxfam shop, Oxfam can provide a month’s food for two people affected by the present hunger crisis affecting millions of people in South Sudan, Yemen and Ethiopia; €25/£25 can help a family of six with food for two months.
So on this National Book Lovers Day, take some time out and treat yourself, while helping others. Why not browse and buy in-store – or bring along some books to donate – to make a real difference by helping to raise funds for Oxfam’s life-saving work. You’ll be helping vulnerable people in poverty turn a new page in their lives.
Barth Bialek, Manager of the Oxfam Books in Rathmines, Dublin
Like all the Oxfam Books stores, we have science and natural history, spirituality and philosophy, classical literature, Irish fiction, travel guides and travel writing, crime and thrillers, fantasy and horror, biographies, sport, health and medicine, non-fiction, gardening and cooking, along with children’s books, audio books, music books, drama, poetry and sheet music – plus lots more besides!
To mark National Book Lovers Day, we have a special offer on fiction/novels, offering any two for €5.00, and that will run until Sunday.
Chris Scott, Manager of the Oxfam Books in Botanic Avenue, Belfast
You’ll also find collectable and antiquarian books. Past donations include a book dating back to 1912 about the Titanic along with a Bible from 1587, the year that Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded. Call in and see what you might discover!
Christine Kostick, Manager of the Oxfam Books in Parliament Street, Dublin
We stock thousands of great quality second-hand books and music, with everything from Plato to Peppa Pig and from Nietzsche to New Order. Explore our wide-range of book genres and browse through our CDs, DVDs, classical sheet music and vinyl.
Eleanor Preston, Manager of the Oxfam shop in French Church Street, Cork
We have a wide selection of page-turners. You’ll find fiction best-sellers, literary classics, sci-fi thrillers plus lots more! We also have a music collection and DVDs. Donations of all of these items are gratefully accepted.
Niall Browne, Manager of the Oxfam Books in Ann Street, Belfast
No matter what genre you’re into, there are plenty of great reads waiting to be discovered in-store. We have ‘a wee bit of everything’, from modern fiction to military history and lots more besides. There’s also the occasional first edition, rare book, collector’s item or signed copy. Come in and have a browse!
Oxfam has condemned today’s suggestion by the European Commission on plans for new ‘controlled centres’ for refugees and migrants inside the EU and its proposed arrangements for disembarking migrants rescued in the Mediterranean in countries outside the EU.
Reacting to the news, Oxfam Ireland’s Chief Executive Jim Clarken said: “What the European Commission calls ‘controlled centres’ are de facto detention camps. This idea has been tried before and only succeeded in leaving vulnerable people in deplorable, inhumane conditions in so-called ‘EU hotspots’ in Italy and Greece. Rather than creating more camps, European governments must reform the European asylum system so that it is based on responsibility sharing between all member states and puts people’s personal safety, needs and rights first.
“Refugees in ‘EU hotspots’ regularly wait over two years for authorities to make a decision on their asylum claims, through procedures that are often opaque and unfair. This puts asylum seekers, many of whom are already traumatised or victims of trafficking, in a legal limbo without access to basic services such as healthcare or education for children.
“If EU member states are already struggling to provide proper care and a fair process for assessing asylum claims, there is no reason to believe that ‘disembarkation platforms’ outside the EU will be any better. This is just another attempt to offload Europe’s responsibilities onto poorer countries outside of the EU and directly threatens the rights of women, men and children on the move.
“Ireland needs to work with other EU member states to find lasting solutions for people seeking safety in Europe that go beyond so-called ‘controlled centres’. One way that Ireland can contribute to a humane European response is by amending its current restrictive policy on refugee family reunification. Right now, Ireland’s rules keep many refugee families apart and make it almost impossible for them to be re-united. Children turned 18 are separated from their parents, grandparents from their grandchildren, and elder brothers and sisters from their younger siblings.
“Having passed all stages in the Seanad with cross-party support, the International Protection (Family Reunification) (Amendment) Bill 2017 must now be brought before the Dáil as soon as possible so as to enact the urgent change that is needed for families in need of protection.”
European leaders at the EU Summit on 28 June failed to agree on reforms to the common European asylum system, instead allowing internal rows to shape the EU’s migration policy. EU leaders called for the development of “controlled centres” on EU soil, and invited the Council and the Commission to explore the concept of “regional disembarkation platforms” in third countries.
According to the Commission, no country will be approached for “regional disembarkation arrangements” until 30 July, when the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Organisation for Migration and the European Commission meet to discuss the issue.
In June 2018, the number of asylum seekers on the Greek islands reached the unprecedented figure of 17,800. In the island’s hotspot, Moria camp and its extension the ‘Olive Grove’ (not including the protected areas and the pre-removal centre in Moria), there are 72 people per functioning toilet and 84 people per functioning shower.
People often spend months in the dark waiting for their asylum claims to be processed. Many refugees do not have access to legal aid, either because they are not informed of their right to a lawyer or because there are not enough lawyers available.
Children as young as 12 are being abused, detained and illegally returned to Italy by French border guards, according to an Oxfam report published on 15 June.
Just a few of the books we're currently reading. Photo: Oxfam
Here are some of our favorite fiction and non-fiction books that illustrate the injustice of poverty and remind us why it's so important to fight to help people overcome the odds. Together, we can beat poverty.
Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in Mumbai, one of the twenty-first century’s great, but unequal cities. In this book, based on three years of reporting, global change and inequality are made human.
In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million—all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian. "King Leopold’s Ghost" is the haunting account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming, and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who fought Leopold: a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure and unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust.
Freedom, Sen argues, is both the end and most efficient means of sustaining economic life and the key to securing the general welfare of the world’s entire population. Releasing the idea of individual freedom from association with any particular historical, intellectual, political, or religious tradition, Sen demonstrates its current applicability and possibilities. In the new global economy, where, despite unprecedented increases in overall opulence, the contemporary world denies elementary freedoms to vast numbers—perhaps even the majority of people—he concludes, it is still possible to practically and optimistically regain a sense of social accountability.
Human society is full of would-be “change agents,” a restless mix of campaigners, lobbyists, and officials, both individuals and organizations, set on transforming the world. They want to improve public services, reform laws and regulations, guarantee human rights, get a fairer deal for those on the sharp end, achieve greater recognition for any number of issues, or simply be treated with respect.
This book bridges the gap between academia and practice, bringing together the best research from a range of academic disciplines and the evolving practical understanding of activists to explore the topic of social and political change. Drawing on many first-hand examples from Oxfam, as well as the author’s insights from studying and working on international development, it tests ideas on how change happens and offers the latest thinking on what works to achieve progressive change.
Reporting from Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Eritrea, Kaplan examines the factors behind the famine that ravaged the region in the 1980s, exploring the ethnic, religious, and class conflicts that are crucial for understanding the region today. He offers a new foreword and afterword that show how the nations have developed since the famine, and why this region will only grow more important to the United States.
BRAC, arguably the world’s largest, most diverse and most successful NGO, is little known outside Bangladesh, where it formed in 1972. BRAC's success and the spread of its work in health, education, social enterprise development, and microfinance dwarfs any other private, government or non-profit enterprise in its impact on tens of thousands of communities in Asia and Africa. “Freedom From Want” traces BRAC s evolution from a small relief operation indistinguishable from hundreds of others, into what is undoubtedly the largest and most variegated social experiment in the developing world. BRAC's story shows how social enterprise can trump corruption and how purpose, innovation, and clear thinking can overcome the most entrenched injustices that society can offer. It is a story that ranges from distant villages in Bangladesh to New York s financial district on 9/11, from war-torn Afghanistan to the vast plains of East Africa and the ruins of Southern Sudan.
With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope.
Henrietta Lacks is part of the DNA of modern medicine, and yet her name had been lost to history until Rebecca Skloot embarked on a journey to learn more about the woman behind the HeLa cell. Her investigation leads her to uncover how Johns Hopkins Hospital exploited Lacks' cells while keeping her family in the dark. Though her cells have brought others millions of dollars of profit, members of her family continue to live in poverty. Through her interviews with Lacks' family and the scientists involved with making a business out of HeLa, Skloot finally brings justice to Lacks' legacy.
Following the interweaving narratives of two young women from a poor loom-working village in Southern India who are forced into unimaginable circumstances as the eldest daughters in their families, Rao tackles some of the most urgent issues facing women today: domestic abuse, human trafficking, immigration, and feminism. Through it all, Poornima and Savita refuse to let the fires inside of them (hope for a brighter future) burn out.
Our heroine Darling is only 10 years old, and yet she must navigate a fragile and violent world. In Zimbabwe, Darling and her friends steal guavas, try to get the baby out of young Chipo’s belly, and grasp at memories of Before. Before their homes were destroyed by paramilitary policemen before the school closed before the fathers left for dangerous jobs abroad. But Darling has a chance to escape: she has an aunt in America. She travels to this new land in search of America’s famous abundance only to find that her options as an immigrant are perilously few.
Eggers illuminates the history of the civil war in Sudan through the eyes of Valentino Achak Deng, a refugee living in the United States. We follow his life as he’s driven from his home as a boy and walks, with thousands of orphans, to Ethiopia, where he finds safety—for a time. Valentino’s travels bring him in contact with government soldiers, janjaweed-like militias, liberation rebels, hyenas and lions, disease and starvation—and a string of unexpected romances. Ultimately, Valentino finds safety in Kenya and, just after the millennium, and is resettled in the United States, from where this novel is narrated. In this book, written with expansive humanity and surprising humor, we come to understand the nature of the conflicts in Sudan, the refugee experience in America, the dreams of the Dinka people, and the challenge one indomitable man faces in a world collapsing around him.
This novel, set in colonial Rhodesia during the 1960s, centers on the coming of age of a teenage girl, Tambu, and her relationship with her British-educated cousin Nyasha. Tambu, who yearns to be free of the constraints of her rural village, especially the circumscribed lives of the women, thinks her dreams have come true when her wealthy uncle offers to sponsor her education. But she soon learns that the education she receives at his mission school comes at a price.
Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss, and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them—in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul—they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation.
This novel explores the tenuous friendship that blooms between two disparate strangers—one an illegal Nigerian refugee, the other a recent widow from suburban London—who are linked through their experiences of a horrifying event.
Set in Burma during the British invasion of 1885, this novel by Amitav Ghosh tells the story of Rajkumar, a poor boy lifted on the tides of political and social chaos, who goes on to create an empire in the Burmese teak forest. When soldiers force the royal family into exile, Rajkumar befriends Dolly, a young woman in the court of the Burmese Queen, whose love will shape his life. He cannot forget her, and years later, as a rich man, he goes in search of her.
Survival for Ki Lim and Sang Ly is a daily battle at Stung Meanchey, the largest municipal waste dump in all of Cambodia. They make their living scavenging recyclables from the trash. Life would be hard enough without the worry for their chronically ill child, Nisay, and the added expense of medicines that are not working. Just when things seem worst, Sang Ly learns a secret about the bad-tempered rent collector who comes demanding money—a secret that sets in motion a tide that will change the life of everyone it sweeps past.
