Mr. Paul Tang:

It is good to be here. I have spent my week in Ireland first discussing taxation and now data protection and privacy. In all honesty, I came here with the idea that it was important to look at the Irish supervisor, the Data Protection Commission, because that is very much an interest of Europe. However, having had discussions with some of the big technology companies yesterday and today, I now realise that it is also very much in Ireland's interest to have very good supervisors because the reason these companies come here is not really taxation. In our discussions, it came up that taxation is just one of many factors. The fact that a constellation of services is provided in Ireland, although mainly in Dublin, including direct contact with a very good supervisor is one of the reasons these firms invest in Ireland. However, that means we want to have good European supervision. As Ms Sippel has explained, data protection and privacy are human rights so this is a European interest but I have learned that it is also in Ireland's interest to have a very good supervisor.