Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will clarify what I mean by this. The Department of Finance gave an answer to a parliamentary question in which it said it first became aware of it only after the Apple hearings in 2013. I want to determine, before this committee today, whether that is the case with the Revenue Commissioners. The Finance Act 1999 amended section 882 of the Finance Act 1997, and stated that any companies incorporated in the State had to provide certain particulars to Revenue within 30 days. Those particulars included the name of the company, the address, the place of residence, the date of commencement of the business and, in the case of a company not resident in the State, the name of the territory in which it is tax resident. If ASI or AOE were incorporated in Ireland post that date, they would have had to tell Revenue that they were stateless but there was no requirement on them to do that because they were incorporated prior to that date. I want to know when the Revenue knew. It surely knew that these companies were stateless. When the Revenue Commissioners identify a loophole, it is their job to come to us as legislators, through the Department of Finance, and tell us. They need to tell us there is a loophole whereby a multinational company, operating and incorporated in Ireland, records profits for that company but does not pay tax anywhere in the world on those profits.