Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I was asking a leading question about subsection (1)(a). The point is that section 21 of the Act has two subsections. Subsection (1)(a) has been explained as an insignificant tidying-up exercise but it will nonetheless be applied from 8 May 2009. The principle of retrospection, therefore, is included here. The Minister's decision not to apply the capital expenditure for the intellectual property that was onshore up until now does not stand up to rigorous testing. I understand that the Minister wants to give certainty and so forth but it is a certainty to companies like Apple that they will continue to be able to write down their tax liability for several more years. We are only just starting to see the tip of the iceberg that is the Paradise Papers and I have no doubt but that we will see more of a spotlight being shone on tax structures.

I want to return to the issue of lobbying. Are the Minister and his officials aware of the lobbying that took place when the Government changed the threshold from 80% to 100% in 2014? Will the Minister inform the committee of this? Will he give a commitment, if he does not have the information to hand, to inform us of all of the individuals, groups and representative bodies who lobbied the Department, the Minister and the Ministers of State on this issue, either directly or indirectly? We already know, for example, that during this very period the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland was lobbying the Department for the threshold to be increased. I do not know if Apple is a member of the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland but I am sure that it has the interests of Apple and companies like it at heart. That chamber lobbied as part of its pre-budget submission in 2015 for the threshold to be increased. What is interesting is that it only asked for it to go up to 90%, whereas the Government went the whole hog of raising it to 100%. We also know that the Department was lobbied on the onshoring of intellectual property as a result of the change to the tax residency rules. We know that the Minister himself was lobbied by the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland with regard to tax changes. I would like him to inform the committee now if any of this concerned the threshold and the date from which it would apply. Was there any discussion of that when he had a meeting with the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland? Will he also put on the record if he or his officials have had any other meetings with representative groups with regard to any aspect of this issue? Did the Department notify, engage with or seek the opinion of any of these companies? I do not mean directly with the companies themselves, of course, as we know how these things work and it is usually through legal representatives. Did the Department seek advice from bodies outside of the Department with regard to the application of this section?