Noel Grealish (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I fully support the decision to appeal the unjust ruling by the European Commission on Apple’s tax affairs. The future of our country depends on it. It is being claimed in some quarters that the outcome of all this will have no impact on Ireland’s ability to attract foreign direct investment in the future. Does anyone really believe that in the boardrooms of these major international companies they are not discussing the situation? One of the biggest of them all is suddenly facing an unexpected tax bill for billions of dollars. In those conversations about whether they should vigorously contest this ruling, the lasting impression of Ireland will be that it is a country where a company cannot be quite certain about the future of any investment it may be considering making there. That kind of uncertainty will surely be a deciding factor in many cases, where the merits of Ireland as against Poland, Singapore or wherever are being considered in terms of locating new projects. Equally, how many major companies already located in Ireland will have second thoughts about expanding their operations here if we do not clearly show that we stand by our conviction that we have done nothing wrong and indeed they have nothing to fear from their future here? Total employment at overseas companies in Ireland stands at more than 187,000 people, the highest level on record. That has to be acknowledged.

A perfect example of the huge importance of foreign direct investment can be found in my home county, where approximately 14,000 people are employed by companies supported by IDA Ireland. Galway is the hub of a globally recognised med-tech cluster that employs one third of the country’s 25,000 medical device employees. Boston Scientific and Medtronic alone employ the best part of 5,000 people. Galway is also home to four of the top five information and communication technology sector companies: IBM, SAP, Oracle and Cisco. These companies are still employing people. I recently met with a few recruitment agencies in Galway and they told me all of these multinational companies are employing. Cisco is looking for between 40 and 50 more employees. These are global leaders in other areas too, including HP. It has always been the case that where the big players go, the other major companies sit up and take notice. They then very often follow suit, on the basis that the area obviously fulfils the requirements of a major concern in terms of having an educated workforce, a good environment and so on. The presence of so many of the major international companies such as the ones I have just mentioned has played no small part in attracting developments, such as the decision by Apple to make an €850 million investment in Athenry, which is only a couple of miles up the road from where I live. I attended the oral hearing and was the only politician who spoke in favour of this project's getting the go-ahead from An Bord Pleanála. I visited the Apple plant in Cork and was immensely impressed by the number of people employed there, the structure in place and what they think of Ireland. A few of the top Apple executives recently came to visit me in my office in Galway and I was delighted that they assured me they were going ahead with this project immediately. It will be a ten-year construction job involving 1,000 people and over a hundred people will be employed there. I am sure it was among the factors in a recent €51 million investment in Oranmore by the medical devices company Zimmer, creating 250 jobs.

Nothing must stand in the way of continued investments like these if we are to fulfil our hopes of providing decent employment opportunities to give our young people the option to stay at home and give those who have gone to Australia, America and elsewhere the chance to return. There is far more at risk here than the direct employment which these major international companies provide in Ireland. IDA-supported companies spend approximately €4 billion a year on goods and services sourced in Ireland. This means that many, many thousands of people employed in small- and medium-sized companies are busy at work, benefitting from supplying these large concerns. Who knows what is around the next corner if the European Commission gets its way in relation to Apple and its decision that the company received what amounted to illegal state aid here? How many more of the companies this country depends on for its future growth and stability will face similar outrageous treatment? Will it end up creating instability in the future and putting a spoke in the wheel of Ireland’s continuing recovery from the awful economic situation it found itself in over the past decade? This is not just scaremongering. The European Commission is trying to take new rules that it introduced in recent years and apply them to years before that. How many companies are going to risk coming into this country in the coming years if there is a risk that, a decade or more further on in the future, the Commission will decide to shake things up again and apply more new rules retrospectively? Even now, damage has been done to Ireland’s reputation and integrity by the actions of the Commission.

I compliment the Minister, who has done an excellent job on this, batting for Ireland. I saw him on Bloomberg, the US television station, recently and thought he did an excellent job promoting Ireland and explaining the situation. I know the Department of Finance and the Minister are saying that the decision should not be a cause for concern for companies investing in Ireland and that no other companies are covered by the Commission's decision. I think, however, that the first part of that statement at least might be wishful thinking. We are told it will be several years before all of this is finally decided and adjudicated on. My fear is that until there is a final outcome, some US and other international companies might just put on ice any plans they may have had, but that are not yet announced, either to locate in Ireland for the first time or to expand existing operations. It is important that the message go out loud and clear from this House today that we are here to support them and that we will welcome them and support them in every way we can.

The American Government, meanwhile, is among those supporting Ireland’s position in this case, which it says is undermining the international tax system. The US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has contended that the Commission should not seek backdated recoveries of tax in respect of the years before it decided on its new approach. In a white paper published the week before last, he said that attempts by the Commission to recover tax retroactively would “undermine the G20’s efforts to improve tax certainty and set an undesirable precedent for tax authorities in other countries”.

We would also have to retain some suspicion, despite the Commission's protestations, of some of the motivation behind this investigation and whether it is in any way connected with the persistent efforts made in recent years to force Ireland to increase its corporate tax rate. Ultimately, even if Apple is forced to pay the €13 billion, hardly any of the sum will accrue to Ireland. All of the talk about the fantastic benefits to our health and social welfare systems, etc., is just pie in the sky and an attempt to mislead people into thinking we are looking a gift horse in the mouth by appealing this ruling. It is vital that we stand by our contention that we have done nothing wrong and that we send out a clear signal that Ireland is a reliable location to invest in by fighting this ruling in the strongest way possible.

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