Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach has put great store on the question of Ireland's international reputation. Time and again he has cited the importance of maintaining and rehabilitating Ireland's reputation on the international stage as a key reason for continuing the bailout of banks and protecting the financial system, as he calls it - it is because our international reputation is so important. In his recent visit to the United States, did the Taoiseach feel that the visit coincided with stunning revelations emanating from a US congressional committee that American companies were using Ireland as a tax shelter to avoid paying tax, were paying little or no corporation tax and were using the State as a means to avoid paying tax, and that this did immense damage to our international reputation and our reputation in United States, in which the Taoiseach puts so much store? Does the Taoiseach think, in light of these and similar allegations made in the British Parliament, that Ireland is a tax haven and is facilitating aggressive tax avoidance by US multinationals, and that if we are to protect our international reputation we must be seen to take vigorous, aggressive and serious action to get to the bottom of this? Does the Taoiseach not think that the shooting down of a proposal made by me, Deputy Pearse Doherty and Deputy Joe Higgins at the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform that the representatives of Google, Facebook and Apple should come before the committee to answer questions on their tax avoidance schemes and how they use this country to that effect is damaging to the international reputation the Taoiseach thinks is so important? How can he square his defence of Ireland's international reputation with the fact that he, his party and his Government are involved in a conspiracy of silence about Ireland's corporate tax regime and the use of this country by US multinationals as a tax haven and shelter? How can he square these two things, and will he do anything about it if our reputation, which he considers so important, is not to be left in tatters?

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