Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am always interested in new ways of finding revenue in order to fund better public services. The clearest proof I can offer of the difficulty of making this happen is that a group of other EU countries have been involved in enhanced co-operation on this proposal for over six and a half years and it still has not happened. Included within that enhanced co-operation procedure are countries that are many times bigger than Ireland with very large financial services sectors. The clearest evidence that I can offer to Deputy Paul Murphy of the difficulty in making this happen is that countries that are committed to doing it - and Ireland is not one of them - still have not done so. They have not done so because once they get into the nitty gritty of doing it, they run into the global complexity of the issue that I have described that affects Ireland or that I am seeing through an Irish lens, namely that in order to avoid losing investment, employment and the location of companies, it would need to happen on a global level and there are no signs of that at all.

Ireland is not a tax haven. We have very clear tax policies which are independently implemented by the Revenue Commissioners. We always have issues that we need to address to ensure that tax is being paid fairly and effectively within our country but we are not a tax haven. The proposal that the Deputy has outlined here is not practical in terms of it actually happening for our country and as I said, countries larger than Ireland have decided not to do it.