Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I want to flag my concerns about this. I am opposing the entire Bill because we have had clear evidence that corporations are using every means available to avoid tax and push the boundaries of the available tax breaks to minimise their tax bill. The criteria under which one can get the 12.5% tax rate reduced to 6.5% appear to be wide open to abuse and I do not see the safeguards against this. There are, for example, constant upgrades to mobile phones or the iPhone and these could be, as the legislation states, a group of inventions that are part of a general inventive concept. In these cases the companies in question could pay 6.5% for ever and a day.