Professor Jim Stewart:

I agree that to some extent it is a global issue. Sometimes Ireland is included with Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland as being one of four OECD tax havens. In some ways, the Netherlands is a bigger tax haven than Ireland. As a proportion of GDP, holding company assets in Luxembourg are very large, while other aspects of the Luxembourg system would qualify as features of a tax haven. I argue that Ireland is not a tax haven, but it does have features of a tax haven. However, that is also true of other countries.