David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have no difficulty with the proposal. The Chairman gave the example of these companies appearing in different jurisdictions and committees of parliaments. Some of those committees are very high-powered and have many staff, and the members have lots of support. We do not have that. It is a caveat to this.

Much of this focusses on alleged loopholes that these companies were operating to avoid paying tax. This is all legal and above board, but the companies were allowed to use structures to reduce their tax liability. The Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform has done a lot of work on this already. Can we get a briefing for the members of this committee on what the lie of the land and the tax code was before the changes? There were changes made in 2013 and 2015. Perhaps that is contained in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report, but I doubt all of it is. It would be useful to have as much information as possible available to us to prepare for those meetings. I imagine that we are talking about meeting the companies next year, so that gives the secretariat enough time to get solid briefing packs for us. We also require the information about the operation of the tax code and the changes that were made. Otherwise we will not be able to do the type of job that is required. Given the limited resources that we have we will depend on as much background information as we can get.