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

It is shameful that we were afraid to have the multinationals attend. Regardless of that sub-committee, they should attend to answer questions just as they had to appear before the British Parliament and the American Congress.

In 2014, PricewaterhouseCoopers conducted a poll of business leaders, of whom 59% stated that there should be public country-by-country reporting. Even the business leaders do not see a problem with it, yet a minority of business leaders - those associated with the large multinationals - and governments with close relationships with those multinationals do not want it. I do not see how anyone can sustain the claim that we do not need this information, given the aggressive tax avoidance of such companies, their importance to all of our lives and the way in which they influence the global economy. It is not on that this reporting would not be done publicly.