Professor Frank Barry:

That is a very interesting question. We speculated for some time about whether the US Senate hearings and reports would cause reputational damage for Ireland. The US newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, has had Ireland in its sights for a long time, complaining about Ireland's tax regime. I spoke to one of its journalists from the US. It has a stringer in Ireland to whom I often talk, but I was called by a journalist in its US office and had a long chat on precisely this subject. They told me that the sense they were getting from Silicon Valley was that this was doing us no damage whatsoever. I talked with the IDA economists afterwards about this and they said that was exactly what they were hearing as well. That is interesting. I regard the The Wall Street Journal as a hostile source in that sense, so the fact it was saying that was interesting and certainly indicative. Yes, I think we might be over-paranoid here about the possible reputational consequences.

There are two things to worry about. One is the companies, and the American companies do not appear to be worried. However, there are also the international organisations and what they might do. The fact that Brussels is looking into this, no matter how informally, is probably a result of the Senate sub-committee hearings and the like.