Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It might be helpful to put a date on it. I could work out it was post-Brexit from the fairly minimal amount of references to Brexit.

Two separate sentences, that the Department will continue to work at international level to help influence debate on corporate taxation and the Department will be at the forefront of the legal challenge to the European Commission state aid ruling with respect to Apple, flow into each other in the statement, but they are two huge topics which cover the CCCTB, BEPS, the OECD, everything relating to global tax planning and Apple, and how dependent we are as a State on a very small number, perhaps seven, eight or ten, of large multinationals which contribute almost half our corporation tax. We have touched on Brexit and mentioned Trump, but how exposed are our tax revenues and our economy to the revenues generated by these enormous multinationals, and what is the Department doing and looking at in this regard? Enormous figures are generated by a very small number of companies. How volatile could these figures be? We looked at the debt-to-GDP ratio. This is falling, but a portion of this is because GDP is rising as much as because debt is actually falling. It is a fair comment, but if it is not the witnesses might tell me so. I ask the witnesses to discuss the CCCTB and Apple.