Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 31 January 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: European Commissioner for Competition

12:30 pm

Ms Margrethe Vestager:

As the Deputy said, we went through the minutes of all the board meetings of the headquarters. What was found was not what we were looking for. What we were looking for was evidence to support the idea that the profits should be recorded in the headquarters. We were looking for discussion about the management of IP and employees or anything of the sort. There was nothing of the sort because there were no employees, there were no premises and there was no one to manage the IP. That is why we write as we do that there was no economic reality to back up the idea that the profits were to be recorded in the headquarters. That is why it must be recorded in the branch, because the two were basically one and the same.