Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Draghi for coming here for our special meeting. He is very welcome. I was impressed by his opening statement and responses in terms of his knowledge of the Irish economy, and all the points have been covered. The select committee is currently dealing with the Finance Bill. The budget was relatively uncontroversial. We have low interest rates. As was alluded to, our national debt is costing less. It might be that we have extra corporation tax coming in at a rate that was never predicted, but we have a good deal of public and private debt. Mr. Draghi is looking in on us but we are here all day, every day.

In terms of the challenges we face, we have a very significant dependence on a small number of foreign direct investment, FDI, companies contributing to almost half our corporation tax receipts. Mr. Draghi is not responsible for it but in terms of the common consolidated corporate tax base, CCCTB, digital taxation and so on, we have been told the CCCTB is not a bad thing for the EU as a whole. However, we do not have any country-by-country analysis of how that would work. The top ten companies contribute up to 40% of our corporation tax receipts. I have a concern that if any of those companies were to change their location or move to a different jurisdiction, we would be exposed very quickly. Does Mr. Draghi have any thoughts on that?