Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The case for payment of tax-free expenses has been principally made by the foreign direct investment community, its representatives, the IDA and other organisations that are endeavouring to bring in foreign expertise at board level. It is worth noting that, in response to recent consultation on the tax treatment of expenses generally, the majority of submissions focused largely or entirely on this issue.

There are provisions under law, as I understand it, for parent companies to provide directors to subsidiaries in Ireland and frequently they fly in from abroad, largely from the United States. The submissions to me demonstrated that this was an inhibition on foreign direct investment companies and that we should remove the inhibition and, in effect, incentivise the ability of foreign direct investment parent companies to appoint directors to act as board members in Ireland.