Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

Corporate America will be making its views known and setting out how it sees the proposal developing and evolving in terms of its meeting policy objectives. While we must respect the right of any government to set out a taxation policy we will need to use the good relationship we enjoy with the US Administration and Congress to ensure all aspects, or any unintended adverse impacts of the tax proposal as it evolves, are taken into account. The Minister for Foreign Affairs met a couple of weeks ago at the American Ireland Fund some industrialists from corporate America and spoke with some of their people who have an involvement in the tax issue. It is a matter of supplementing and augmenting an effort undertaken by corporate America through its interaction with Congress. As a country with a great deal of foreign direct investment from the United States we will be keeping a close eye on this issue with a view to persuading or influencing in a positive way the evolution of this proposal. We must take a balanced and sensible approach to this and not make demands left, right and centre that might result in a negative impact. We must be diplomatic, know what are the issues, focus on them as they affect us and work with others so that the overall outcome is acceptable, in particular from our point of view.

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