Mr. Michael Taft:

These brochures are targeted at continental Europe. The firms suggest companies come to Ireland and they will show those companies how to pay 2.5% tax. That may not represent a tax haven as such but it certainly provides a haven from higher taxation if companies are trying to move from a higher tax regime, such as Germany, France or possibly America, to here.

I offer one example. I realise Mr. O'Brien is coming at it from the accountancy and tax-based approach. I have come at it from the macroeconomic end. Anyway, the claim is that our corporate tax system is transparent. However, we cannot undertake key economic measurements because of what Forfás has termed multinational accountancy practices. For example, Forfás cannot measure Irish productivity, which is an incredible situation. As a result of the intervention of multinational accounting practices, which inflate gross value added and gross operating surplus in the multinational-dominated sectors, Forfás has to measure the productivity of the labour force in the United States and apply that measurement here. It is a highly unsatisfactory situation and possibly unique among western industrialised countries. I do not know of other countries which have to do that. That is an example of where the multinational accountancy practices actually undermine the basic data. That is the practice and consequently we cannot compare input and output tables throughout Europe, either through EUROSTAT or Central Statistics Office data. For similar reasons we cannot compare gross operating surplus or profits per employee in particular sectors because the data are way off the chart. If that is occurring then of course it is occurring in our tax base.