The Tánaiste has opposed greater taxation of Ireland's wealthy, while calling on them to embrace the US culture of giving back to society through charitable endowments.
In an interview to be broadcast tonight in the RTÉ Radio One New Wealth, New Issues series, Ms Harney says increasing tax on wealth would only encourage the rich to live elsewhere as tax exiles, she said.
She strongly defended the Government's cuts in inheritance taxes, saying those who had earned wealth had the right to decide what should happen to it. "If one generation has earned the wealth and worked hard, it is reasonable to say that they should make the decision on who benefits from that."
She said the reason estate duties had been abolished and inheritance taxes cut "is to make more things happen and to be fairer to those that generate wealth and own wealth in our society. If our society seeks to use whatever tools Government has available to it, either through tax or through other legislative provisions to stop people keeping the proceeds of what they fairly earned as a result of their hard work, then I believe people will use alternatives - they will go off shore, they will live elsewhere. Some of our wealthiest individuals do so already."
She said she was also strongly against any increase in capital acquisitions tax. "We are not short of revenue," she said. Ireland had to continue to do well economically because otherwise it would not generate the resources to pay for health, education and welfare services.
She was responding to questions about the fairness of the situation in which those on the minimum wage were in the tax net and those on the average industrial wage paid some tax at the top rate, yet Revenue Commissioners' figures showed the top 30 earners in the State paid no income tax at all while the top 50 paid less than 5 per cent.
"I wouldn't be against the notion of some minimum tax if I thought it would work. But legislation doesn't solve all our problems," Ms Harney said.
She said she wants those earning the average industrial wage to be removed from the top tax band in next year's Budget, with minimum wage earners removed from the tax net altogether in the lifetime of the Government. "The resources are there to do that and I would like to see that happen."
While opposing the taking of wealth from the rich through taxation, she said she would encourage them to give something back to society through philanthropic and charitable acts.
"I would like to see perhaps in Ireland, on a voluntary basis, a greater culture of some of the wealth that is acquired going back to the State, not necessarily through taxes or through legislation but perhaps through endowments, through foundations.
"There is a very strong culture in the United States where very rich people have a great sense in wanting to give something back to the society which gave their wealth. You see, for example, a lot of education, health, a lot of worthy causes through foundations and endowments and indeed Ireland has been a huge beneficiary of Atlantic philanthropy. I'd love to see a greater culture in Ireland around that notion."
She said she agreed with the concept Mr Michael McDowell was trying to articulate recently when he spoke of inequality as being a driver of economic progress, although it "could have been explained using different language".
"What Michael was acknowledging and I strongly support, is that we live in a meritocracy where people are rewarded on the basis of merit, where everybody is not the same, people have different skills, different capacity, different IQs, different strengths.
"It's like a football team: Some make premier division and others aren't so good unfortunately," Ms Harney said.
"We don't live in a society where everybody is the same but we do live in a society in this Republic of ours where everybody should have equality of opportunity and that's what's important: The republican ideal of ensuring that we target resources to those most in need, that it's not a question of the mighty can survive and everybody else can just go under."