Mr. Philip Kermode:

There is a distinction to be made between the cases that the Commission is pursuing. They are cases on specific decisions involving certain transfer pricings and the very general issue of whether or not the international rules, at the moment, allow a situation whereby profits can be shifted in a way that people find unfair. That essentially is what it boils down to and in BEPS this is the issue. As Mr. Lynch rightly said, this is not a peculiarly Irish issue in BEPS.

The OECD countries have recognised that the architecture that they put in place, over many years, finds it extremely difficult to deal with multinational companies, given that they are always starting from a position that was considerably different when the rules were put in place. One had jurisdictions that were largely independent, company structures that were different and one had much less reliance on intangible property. Now one has the situation where the rules have stayed more or less the same but the capacity for businesses to move around their income has changed quite dramatically.

As a general point, there is a big issue which is what BEPS is trying to deal with and I would echo what Mr. Lynch has said. On an individual case it is not possible to make a judgment unless one knows the case inside out and one knows all of the facts and figures that go into same. Even then, that would be a question for people to debate here in Ireland. It would be a very specific application of the problem.

I wish to re-enforce the point. The reason there is discussion at international level which, in some cases focused on Ireland but in other cases focused on other jurisdictions, is this general recognition that people feel that the current architecture does not give a fair result, and does not allow the tax to be focused where the value is created.