Professor Jim Stewart:

It is a public consultation to which the institute and the big four are invited. It states:

This public consultation process is the next step in a process already underway by the Irish authorities with business groups organised through IBEC, the Irish Tax Institute, the American Chamber of Commerce and Chartered Accountants Ireland. Consultations have also taken place with civil society organisations.

The people best informed to shape this consultation process are of course the big accounting firms because they have the expertise. It is all very well for the Department of Finance or the Revenue Commissioners to say anybody can get one of these advance rulings. It recalls what people say about the law being like The Ritz - it is free to walk in but how can anybody else, without significant wealth, afford to get a tax ruling, a lobby and so on?
The problem is our tax-based industrial policy and we need to move away from that and emphasise indigenous firms. We need to focus on the things that really matter, new products, quality improvement, logistics, supply chain management and marketing. These are the things that will lead to long-run economic success. Tax policy will lead to tax-induced behaviour. If there is a tax concession there is an incentive to minimise tax to try to fit one activity into that. For example, when there was a manufacturing tax there was a constant struggle to widen the definition so that grain-drying, bagging coal and all sorts of activities became manufacturing. It is also a mindset. If there is a problem with innovation, or in some other area, the solution is to introduce a tax concession.