Ms Marie Armstrong:

We are just not keeping pace. Ms Byrne mentioned AIG; although financial services and the IFSC are very important none of the clients we deal with said they would take 1,000 jobs from London and bring them here. That will not happen; they will bring a smaller number of jobs. When it comes to bringing a larger number of jobs, we are always asked outside the corporate tax rate, which is absolutely a pillar, what the personal tax rate is. Many companies have what they call tax equalisation policies. They start by looking at their home country to establish how much an employee would earn after tax in that country and calculate how much they need to pay that person in Ireland in order to ensure it is the same.

We have done some things, for example, SARP, the special assignee relief programme, which affords tax relief to companies bringing foreign nationals to work in the country. We have also done some things to reciprocate regarding expanding the number of countries for which there is a foreign earnings deduction if they go abroad. However, we are just not competitive enough, particularly in the entrepreneurial space. I constantly meet people in start-up Irish companies that get bought out by US or other foreign companies. Unfortunately that happens in the very early stage. One of the reasons is that people are trying to decide whether to stay on or sell on and make the money now. Unfortunately that is often driven by their after-tax return on the investment. The UK has improved its entrepreneurship tax regime and has become more competitive. I have met a number of entrepreneurs who have considered setting up a company in the UK because they will do better after tax. We have not done enough.

We have done some things on farm consolidation which is very important. In order for the agrifood industry to survive we need to upskill and change the type and quality of products. We were talking about Kobe beef and other such high-end premium products that our farmers can produce. Farm consolidation, more efficient farms, the use of technology in agriculture and the tax reliefs around that are definitely helping the agricultural industry. We can always do more and at the very least we need to compete on an international stage. That is under serious threat with the common consolidated tax base, with the EU being unhappy with how the taxes are shared among us. We will continue to come under pressure in that area.