People Before Profit Dublin City Councillor Conor Reddy said “If there were justice in this country, it would be legal offices, Leinster House and the IFSC feeling the fire for ‘tax avoidance’ and actual tax evasion, not working-class street traders making relatively small amounts at Christmas time on ‘counterfeit’ goods.
Billionaires and the world's largest corporations funnel enormous sums of money through Ireland to avoid paying tax. It's a deep injustice to us and to countries being robbed of much-needed tax revenue by these arrangements. Those involved - politicians, billionaires, legal and professional service firms - cause much more harm than anyone involved in the ‘counterfeit’ goods market. Just look at what some of the largest players and beneficiaries of the tax haven are up to - vulture funds buying up whole estates of new homes, developers killing our city with grey commercial buildings like Hammerson wanted in Moore Street, the list goes on.
These stalls are part of the fabric of our city. Many of the families trading on them have traded for generations, only to be undercut and undermined by the arrival of big retailers, who are often also beneficiaries of ‘Tax Haven Ireland’. Christmas is pretty much all they have left and stalls over many years have become an important part of the Christmas experience in our city, one of the few redeeming aspects of a time of the year that's become an increasingly vulgar spectacle of empty consumerism, it's shocking they are being treated this way.
The traders I know are the best of us, looking after those around them, actually caring for this city. Solidarity with the stall holders and street traders.”