Dr. Seamus McGuinness:

I am sure that there is underlying analysis behind that analysis but it has not been made public or published. It could be informal analysis undertaken within the Department. It should be noted that this analysis, whether the numbers are right or wrong, is solely based on pillar 1, which is the reallocation of taxing rights to market countries. We make and sell a great amount of stuff, particularly through the foreign companies. The suggestion under pillar 1, which looks like it is struggling to get international agreement, is that the taxing rights would go more to the market countries. It is not certain or clear which countries would lose. Would it be a production or producer country, like Ireland, or would it be the other research and innovative countries like the US, from which many of these products originally derived?

There is a solid basis for saying, yes, that Ireland would lose a certain amount of a tax base if more of the taxable income was to be taxed in the market countries. Quantifying that, however, is quite difficult.

On the other hand, in respect of the risks, if we look at pillar 2, at the global minimum tax rate and the decision that Ireland has taken, which was set out in my opening statement, to move to a 15% rate for large companies; in the main, that should be revenue positive. A move from 12.5% to 15% is a 20% increase in the rate. If, as we did in the past year, we collected €20 billion, and we increase the rate by one fifth, just on a standstill basis, that would be an additional €4 billion of tax revenue, which was the total of such revenue collected in 2014.