Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Commissioner. In general I am not a fan of the European Commission. However, the Commissioner plays a very useful role in this area because she can probably understand and see from the questions that, politically, the ruling caused the Government and the Fianna Fáil Party a lot of difficulty to explain the rationale for using public money to fight the case and not to have €13 billion in taxes owed to the Irish people collected.

It was a political problem for them and so we had an immense campaign of disinformation and misinformation by the Government in an effort to confuse the issue. The Commissioner has been able to bring some clarity and light to the situation.

Is it a fair interpretation of the ruling to say that Apple effectively, in communication with the Irish Government, arrived at an agreement about how much tax it would pay and then the tax system was reverse engineered to arrive at that amount?