Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

If no one else wishes to contribute, I wish to raise a couple of points.

I thank Ms Greene for an excellent contribution. The point I took from it very clearly was there effectively seemed to be a back-door mechanism which was being employed by the Commission to integrate with the tax rather than the accounting-reporting area. Effectively, what we are really looking at is a mechanism within this proposal which very much brings in areas of taxation. While I accept and acknowledge the contributions made by Deputy Seán Crowe on transparency and the work done by the last Government and the views of the Government and most other people on the need for transparency, I have a particular worry in this regard.

I am particularly concerned that in any subsidiarity proposal examined by the committee tax policy is an issue for the member state and not for the Commission. Ms Greene made reference on a number of occasions to accounting terminology, which is effectively tax terminology, and the differences between them. The more we look at this and see what it attempts to do, I am concerned it is going fairly directly into the tax area and bringing the Commission into the tax area. Is there a feeling, particularly in the Department, that the more the threshold of €750 million decreases, the more Irish companies will get involved in this? I raised this point at the previous meeting. Some of the requirements are effectively tax reporting requirements and not accounting requirements. Is this a fair assumption?