Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 12 February 2015

Public Accounts Committee

2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
IDA Ireland - Financial Statement 2013
Enterprise Ireland - Financial Statement 2013

10:00 am

Mr. Martin Shanahan:

It means it will make the environment more competitive but that is what we do every day. We go out and we win investment in a competitive environment. Some of that competition comes because of the way tax rates are structured or because we do not have the critical mass of urban areas or all the talent we would like to have available. On the other hand, we win more investment than we could probably expect given the size of the country and on a metric such as our share of GDP among the EU28, we outperform other countries. We do so because we have a competitive tax offering currently and we need to continue to protect that and build on it. We have probably some of the best talent available worldwide. Ireland is an attractive place to live and work and we have attractive urban areas, even if they are not international cities of scale. That is what we compete on.