Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The data on county enterprise board employment has not been collected on the rigorous statistical basis that has applied traditionally to the IDA and Enterprise Ireland. One thing we need to do is get a more accurate reflection of the jobs impact and that is something we hope to develop.

Deputy Calleary raised the issue of the case being made that Ireland is a tax haven. We absolutely reject that and there is strong evidence in this regard. Ireland has a statute-based tax code. It is based on a low rate but there are not many allowances against it. There is no issue of special deals being negotiated by any individual. Tax is primarily a responsibility for the Department of Finance but the Government, including the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, the Minister for Finance and myself, and the IDA have taken a strong position in the media and in communicating directly with the authorities in the USA, where necessary, setting out our case. It is important to recognise that there is an issue around aggressive tax planning. No one denies that it is an issue. Deputy Tóibín raised the question of whether we know the number of Irish-registered non-resident companies. We do not have figures. By their nature they do not return tax in Ireland and therefore I do not know, but perhaps the Revenue Commissioners have better estimates.

Our rules for deciding whether a company is tax-based in Ireland are common. The British operate in the same way. If a company is managed and controlled in Ireland, then that is the basis for deciding whether it pays tax. It is the same in the United Kingdom. The difficulty arises when people who are aggressively tax-planning play one set of tax rules against another and look for arbitrage across the tax rules. I strongly maintain that it is not our tax system that is the problem, it is the arbitrage across difference tax systems. There will have to be international action to deal with that in order to be effective and that is the approach the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, and the Government has taken.

Deputy Lawlor raised the issue of the IDA. The IDA allocation last year included a special €10 million allocation relating to the write-off of a specific grant. There was an additional allocation and the authority made some specific property acquisitions that year. Generally, the capital allocation this year will be made up and is largely dictated by grant approvals over the past five years rather than grant approvals for this year. What is allocated will reflect decisions made over several years. Obviously, there has been a dip but we are now back to top-level IDA performance. We have had better IDA performance recently than for several years.

We should recognise that over time grant levels through the IDA will probably decline. Fewer companies will be attracting significant grant levels because of restrictions on state aid and because generally in the case of many of these companies the State will not be giving large grants for expansions. There is a change in the nature of it. We will be doing more in the way of promoting, going to countries and winning new investment, but it will be on a broader range of criteria rather than simply grant paying. That is a long-term change. There is also a carry over of €7 million in the €86 million in 2013. Given the multi-year budgets, we are allowed to carry over unspent money and that reflects the nature of it. This is a long-term pipeline, not a one-off payment.