Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome Mr. Cody and his colleagues from the Revenue. I appreciate the constraints he is working within but I want to focus initially on what is the nub of the case, as I read it and having read the Commission's overall decision. It goes back to the tax rulings, as it calls them, or the advance opinions, whereby the basis of deciding how much of the profits of Apple Sales International, ASI, and Apple Operations Europe, AOE, reside in the Irish branch and how much reside in head office. It set out in its decision the basis that was used so in the case of ASI, for example, the 1991 tax opinion was that the net profit allocated to ASI's Irish branch would be calculated as 12.5% of all branch operating costs, excluding material for resale. Similarly, in the case of AOE, the net profit attributable to the Irish branch would be calculated as 65% of that branch's operating expenses up to an annual amount and 20% of its operating expenses etc.

Can Mr. Cody clarify for us, and I do not expect him to go into the detail, if the Revenue used a defined methodology in calculating the attribution of profits between the Irish branch and the head office of those two companies, which were incorporated in Ireland but were not tax resident in Ireland? That is the key issue. Was there a defined methodology which Revenue used and which, by the way, would have been used consistently in respect of tax opinions with other multinational companies? Will Mr. Cody try to address that point within the constraints he mentioned?