Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Before I bring in Deputy Boyd Barrett, I will round off something that was said. Believe it or not, I lived in Bermuda a long time ago, by the way, not as an accountant. I remember all the brass plates and noted that many of the accountants out there were Irish. Many senior staff in our own banking system have been trained out there.

The issue, to which both Mr. Keegan and Mr. McCaughey referred, is who is the beneficiary of this process - Mr. McCaughey indicated was the company - and the deferred payment, that the matter goes into an elongated process that may have tax paid at the end of it. I remember watching the UK hearings. Putting aside the morality of all of this argument that these are merely the rules, if I was a shareholder in one of these companies, I would have been infuriated that the company is making a lot of profit and it is ending up in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the Dutch West Indies or wherever, it is banked there and the bank account is getting bigger and bigger. The sums out there are astronomical. If I was a shareholder, I would be asking why the company is banking all of this money out there where I would much rather it pay tax at some rate internationally so that I would get even 1 cent on the dollar because at present I would get no cent on the dollar. I would be interested to hear their thoughts on this. Ultimately, will it be, not the OECD or the G20, but the shareholders of these companies who might force them into paying some level of tax in some jurisdiction?