 Thanks very much everybody and how many of you remember when we used to get any amount of these free every single time We visited a supermarket Yeah, and I'm old enough to remember that and but I'm also old enough to remember how The impact that that had on the Irish countryside with plastic bag litter really spoiling our urban and our rural landscapes on the 4th of March 2002 a plastic bag tax of 15 cent per bag was introduced in Ireland And the impact that had literally overnight on our consumption of plastic bags was phenomenal We went from 328 bags per person per year to 21 literally overnight So we altered our behavior significantly in order to recycle our plastic bags to try and avoid that charge So not only then did it have an impact on our behavior as consumers But that tax has actually yielded over 220 million for the ex-checker since it was introduced in 2002 This is what I adore about tax, and I think it's really exciting about tax Maybe not obvious But not only is it the means that the government uses to collect all the kind of money that we need to run the country and To fund social welfare and so on but it has an incredibly Powerful impact when it comes to social and economic change so it can considerably change our behavior And that's what kind of interests me about it now That can be both positive and negative which makes tax policy making really a kind of a delicate balancing act I'm also old enough to remember when you would struggle to find tax mentioned in any newspaper And that has significantly changed in recent years with the tax avoidance activities of large multinationals hitting headlines like this One, I don't know if you can see it and Making the front pages really Tax has grabbed the attention of the public and the media particularly since the onset of the global economic crisis But with that interest has come a significant concern around ethical behavior in tax So I suppose the accurate computation of tax liabilities for individuals and companies is Involves technical skill and it'll always be essential that our students learn that technical skill That's the way I was taught tax and that's the key focus for many tax teachers still today But I don't believe that focus on technical skill alone is sufficient anymore for us to produce the kind of graduates that are needed In the tax profession today We need to transition tax teaching I believe away from that sole reliance on technical skill into a much more holistic Type of approach and that's what I try to do that in my teaching and I have various tools that I use But there are two in particular that I'd like to share with you today The first is a prediction market project which encourages students to learn about tax in the context of the economy as a whole And then I have an ethics sort of intervention that I wanted to share with you as well So to start with the prediction market If I asked one of you to guess how many sweets are in this jar You might come some bit close to an answer But if I asked 10 of you and I averaged the answer going back to our maths Colleagues were much likely to come closer to the the real figure And that's essentially the premise of a prediction market The idea is to combine the opinions of a group of people into a probability of an uncertain event occurring in the future Okay, so you could tell the probability Maybe of a team winning a game or of a project whether it's going to be delivered on time by combining the opinions of a group Of people who know about that particular Context and and that's basically what a prediction market is if you think of the game who wants to be a millionaire It's a little bit like the the option where the contestant chooses ask the audience Okay, so that sort of approach can be used and to allow large large groups of people to Forecast on uncertain future events and that's that's what I do in terms of the tax policy implications of the Irish budget with a huge amount of students up to 400 Trading on this and so what happens is the students get 5,000 euro, but it's virtual money Okay, and they use that to trade on a market, which is online So initially three questions are posted on the market So an example might be what will be the the Irish corporation tax rate after the budget and a range of options Our answers to that question are offered initially. They have equal probability of occurrence and the students take the virtual Money that they have and they invest it in the answer that they think is most likely To occur and they have to also provide a narrative justification for for their trading So the the outcomes that are listed their probability will change as the students trade on on these these answers and The market opens in in the couple of weeks before the budget happens so the students get to choose and but also to revisit their options as Information about the budget is released in the media So they can buy and sell sell contracts if you like and additional questions then are added to the market and in the lead Up to the budget. So by the end the students are trading on up to 15 tax policy questions Now the idea of having them Forecast around the budget is that the market makes them search for and analyze all of the kind of information That's released in the lead up to the Irish budget. So to do well students have to be watching the news They have to read the newspapers. They have to follow all the social media in the lead up to the budget And so that in enhances their disciplinary knowledge of tax and tax policy making within the broader economic context But not only that they also have to assess the validity of the sources of information that they're relying on Which enhances their information literacy skills? That's one I suppose turning to to the ethics Dimension I believe across all of the domains that we're teaching in there's a necessity for the students to really engage with the moral and ethical implications of their decisions and I think that's something and that that's important across across all domains and In order really to raise the standard of ethics in tax It's essential for us as educators to embrace the kind of effective methods of Enhancing our students ethical and moral reasoning and this is I suppose what this other project is about And it's an ethics intervention which involves the students discussing in an online forum various ethical dilemmas in tax and each of those discussions is prompted using a range of stimulus which is designed sort of to elicit debate and prompt prompt discussion So there's ethical vignettes that I've developed contemporary quotes video clips journal articles and so on and But the students moral reasoning levels are actually measured before and after the module so they can actually monitor their own Ethical development as them as the module progresses As well the aim with this is to prompt students to reflect on the kind of dilemmas that they might face as graduates They get to a chance really to develop their personal principles when it comes to ethics and they challenge each other so they either have to defend their position or they might come around to somebody else's perspective through sort of reasoned debate and It's that kind of debate that the literature suggests prompts Development in in ethical or moral reasoning So suppose that's just a taste of some of the tools that I use in order to try and facilitate my students learning about tax in a much more holistic way than just to focus on the technical aspects and The computational technical aspects will always remain important But I don't think there enough if we're to produce the type of graduates that will turn out I supposed to be proactive businessmen and women who think critically and who behave responsibly. Thank you