Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

I agree with much of what has been said but the best course of action is to refer the comments made by Deputies Burton and Bruton to the Revenue Commissioners so they can be used in the formulation of their administrative documentation on the scheme. There is no conflict of interest between the Revenue Commissioners and the US authorities in their philosophy on the scheme in question. The Revenue Commissioners wish to base the scheme on trading activity for the very obvious reason that intellectual property relief could otherwise be abused to the disadvantage of the Revenue if it did not have a genuine economic base. That is the same concern expressed by the US authorities. For this reason, it is not necessary to introduce an additional legislative requirement but I accept the point made by the Deputies opposite that, in this context, we must be very careful building our case to ensure our administrative documentation builds up a credible picture in terms of the implementation of the relief in question.

The point is well made that we are in a world that is very much changing in respect of all these matters. It is of great importance that Ireland make it clear it is not a tax shelter and that the nature of the reliefs and their implementation corresponds with the basic principle of our system, namely, that there must be genuine economic activity taking place here if a relief is to be availed of.

The Revenue Commissioners will be collating information on the amount of relief claimed, the number of companies claiming relief, the cost of the relief and the tax yield from companies claiming under the scheme. I will ask the Revenue Commissioners to take account of what is said here today to the effect that, in the implementation of the scheme, additional data should be assembled to show the genuine character of the activities benefiting from the reliefs offered.

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