Mr. Gary Tobin:

The Commission has acknowledged that this is a preliminary stage of its information gathering. Therefore, one could not characterise everything that it has asked for as being specific. It is interested in gathering a wide range of information.

It is important to state that Ireland, unlike a number of other European countries, does not do binding tax rulings. The Irish tax system is statute-based so Revenue is very much bound by the tax law. That is not the case in numerous other European countries, where there are completely different systems in place. The European Commission is trying to understand the different systems in the different countries.