Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It would be helpful if the Minister could come back with the figures. This is an enormous and growing category of allowances - or loopholes, in my language - which big multinationals with multiple subsidiaries are exploiting in order to avoid tax. I understand that he does not have the information now, but I would also appreciate if the Minister could confirm whether there has been a change in the way the Revenue Commissioners list intra-group transactions in their table of allowances, deductions and reliefs for corporate tax. It would be quite worrying if that were the case. Information on the extent to which these companies are using this loophole to effectively lend themselves money and pay themselves interest needs to be publicly available. What is actually profit then becomes a cost, which reduces their taxable profit by huge margins. This effectively means these firms can write their own tax bills. It is a scam that needs to be investigated. At the very least we need complete transparency about the extent of this. It must be very clearly set out in the Revenue Commissioners' tables on deductions, reliefs and allowances.