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

I do not like to attribute motives to the Commission but there is a general move in the Commission as a whole to extend its power and remit. I see this as part of that. I am not saying the Commission does not believe what it is doing or is not acting from good motives or genuinely. It is a different perspective.

Point 7 of the document we published in the late autumn to set out the grounds on which we were taking the appeal states:

The Commission has exceeded its powers and interfered with national tax sovereignty

The Commission has no competence, under State aid rules, unilaterally to substitute its own view of the geographic scope and extent of the Member State’s tax jurisdiction for those of the Member State itself. The purpose of the State aid rules is to tackle State interventions which confer a selective advantage. The State aid rules by their nature cannot remedy mismatches between tax systems on a global level.