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

I thank Deputy Barry. When he started with his Beatles analogy I thought initially he was going to refer to "The Long and Winding Road" or something of that nature to demonstrate the journey that we are on with the pandemic, but the song he picked is probably a more appropriate one given the question he put to me. I did receive a letter from the Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, on his case for a pandemic levy. I did not write back to him; I exchanged messages with him and I plan to talk to him. I find conversation is a better way of teasing out such matters than continually writing to each other. I look forward to having that conversation with him in the coming weeks. What I did say to him over the weekend when he sent his correspondence to me and then it emerged into the public domain is that we potentially have a very significant amount of change pending on how large companies are going to be taxed through the OECD process that was raised with me by Deputy Pearse Doherty. That process has a number of different causes, but one of them is the growing view that we need to ensure that large companies pay more tax and that it needs to be collected in a different way to how it is done currently. I want to deal with that matter first. I believe it will change how, where and the level of tax that is paid by large companies. It is for that very reason that I am not supportive of levying an additional tax at this point.