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

I do not mean to cut across the witness but I must stop him there. That is not the point I am making. We can debate that and there is much dispute about it. We have many figures about what the effective rate might or might not be.

In the example that is in the public domain - I shall not mention the company again - the effective rate implied, and from the company's records, is about 2%. Whatever about the wider question of Ireland's effective rate, somehow the company is managing a 2% tax rate because it charges a huge amount of its revenues to administrative expenses in another subsidiary that is not tax liable here. One can argue that is acceptable and legitimate, within the law or whatever but it is 2% and not anything else. That same situation does not seem to happen elsewhere in Europe. Why does it happen here more than anywhere else?