Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

That is a subject to debate. Professor Barry spoke about closeness to markets and so on as part of the reason for that. We are part of a very big market, the European Union. It seems obvious that part of the reason American companies base themselves here is that we are an English speaking country within the European Union and we have a well educated workforce which speaks English. That is as much an attraction as anything else.

I suggest we focus on the large companies, such as Google and so on that Professor Barry mentioned, and the use of new technology, as I understand it. I was told by somebody who used to work for Google - I would like Professor Barry to confirm it - that is sells advertising from a building on the Quays, its Dublin headquarters, to Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It makes enormous profits from those advertising sales but a charge is levied by Google Ireland holding company which is not tax resident, and that charge, conveniently, is almost exactly the same as the amount of its advertising profits. Given that our tax law does not deem that holding company to be tax resident in this country, it does not pay any tax on work that was done here but people in that building on the Quays sell that advertising. That is tax dodging. The simple way to close it down is to say those people are selling advertising from here, generating those profits from here and that we do not deem it acceptable that this holding company is not tax liable as a way of dodging tax. We consider any company that is incorporated here to be tax liable here and we will enforce the 12.5% tax rate in respect of it. Surely that is the simple easy way to deal with what is a blatant tax dodge.