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

Yes. As I pointed out to the Minister before, and which he ridiculed, in between there is a Central Statistics Office and EUROSTAT figure. It was confirmed by Mr. Seamus Coffey yesterday at the finance committee meeting. It is somewhere between 6.3% and 6.4%. I am glad I have some backup for that figure, which has been ridiculed fairly regularly by the Minister. I am in the middle or somewhat mainstream in terms of the figure I am touting as the effective rate.

Whether we take the fantastic 14% figure or what the Minister considers as fantastic at 2.2%, or even somewhere in the middle with a rate of 6%, 8% or 10%, it remains a serious issue that we cannot get any kind of agreement or consensus on what is the corporate tax. We are at the centre of an international controversy with the issue and there are billions of euro at stake in terms of potential tax revenue. Considering this ourselves and through engagement with European partners, the OECD and so on, how will the issue be clarified? How can we resolve the controversy so we can come to something like an agreed methodology for assessing the effective corporate tax rate in this country?