Mr. Niall Cody:

I would probably baulk at the word "nail". The international tax aims to prevent double non-taxation. There is double taxation where a company is taxed in two countries on the same money. Many of the double tax agreements aim to prevent that, and the company gets credit in one country for paying tax in the other country. The other side of the coin, which tax administrations do not like, is double non-taxation, where the company is not taxable in either country in respect of the same money. We are taking part fully in the exercise at OECD and EU level because there is no tax administration anywhere that likes double non-taxation. We are working very closely at OECD level. There are 15 action points and at the start of the process Ireland decided to be involved in each of them. That is a huge commitment for a small administration and country. It is really important that we are in there because it is very easy for certain large countries to say we have a 12.5% tax or a low rate, that we are a tax haven and so on, and mix up a whole lot of words. The Minister for Finance talks about Ireland’s reputation and changes were made to protect that reputation. A large part of the work of very serious, highly qualified but very scarce resources is tied up in our work on international developments.