Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 31 January 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: European Commissioner for Competition

12:30 pm

Ms Margrethe Vestager:

We do not investigate the motives.

We do not point fingers. We do not say that this person or that person did something that they should not do. The lead of the case was what Apple said in the US hearing that it had a tax incentive arrangement with the Irish Government. I believe that may be the most neutral way of putting it. The very nature of state aid control is that we want to restore the playing field. There are no fines at all. There are no pointed fingers and no criminal proceedings. There is nothing of that. It is just about restoring the level playing field. That is why we want the recovery to be done. Therefore, we do not go into the motives of why it happened. That is not for us. If anyone else wanted to take that up, it is not even for us to advise on it.

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