Mr. Niall Cody:

It is important to look at what a ruling is about. It is not a negotiation of special arrangements. It is applying the Irish tax code to the facts and circumstances of a case. A company is entitled to look for a ruling, we call it an opinion, on complex issues. We have published guidelines since 2002 on how to get a ruling.

We revised them in 2014 for cases dealt with by our large cases division. Under the ruling, the company puts to us a basis of calculating its liability, having regard to the tax code and what the company does. It is about how the company calculates the profits for its branch in the case of an Irish branch of a multinational company. We engage with the advisers and the company and agree a process for calculating the profits, having regard to that activity. We would not, nor would anybody, have the idea of asking whether there is a state aid issue. The authority to determine whether there is state aid is the European Commission Directorate General for Competition. It may examine our legislation on occasion and we receive requests from it to review or provide information on a specific section of the Act as to whether it meets state aid rules. We engage in this. In some cases, it goes on to a legal challenge, in others, when we explain what the system does, that is the end of it. In the original opening statement by the Commission, it stated that, regardless of whether there was an opinion or a ruling, if the law were applied in the way it was applied, it could still be state aid.