Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

No, we cannot because it was contained in the original decision. I do not know if the Senator has read the full decision by the Commission. The latter referenced this as a possibility. There was an accompanying press statement which also said that some of the €13 billion - if that is the correct figure - might be due to other countries. At ECOFIN, Spain and Austria have publicly said that they are considering making claims. It had become a political issue in Austria around the time of that first ECOFIN meeting, when the opposition in that country was demanding that the Government there should seek claims. The difficulty about this is that it suited the Commission that other countries would come in and start demanding extra tax from Apple. It meant that Ireland would be left with few friends when other people around the table thought there was a windfall due to their countries. From a public relations point of view, the Commission was very clever in its presentation and it seems to me that the Commission is now rowing back from that position. What it wrote, however, is what it wrote and what it put in the report is what it put in the report. There is another trap also, which I am sure the committee has seen, where if a country on continental Europe was to pursue a claim to the effect that it was entitled to part of the €13 billion because tax that accrued to Ireland subsequently should have been paid in its jurisdiction, would it not then be opening itself up to a similar state-aid inquiry? If such countries did not collect the appropriate amount of tax from Apple in their jurisdictions, does that not constitute the very essence of state aid?