Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy misunderstands my position. He asked a precise question about how long the investigation process into Apple, initiated by Commissioner Almunia and his staff, would take. I gave the Deputy a timeline on that. That does not mean the Irish authorities will stand idly by and wait until the end of the process before doing anything. In last year's Finance Bill we took the first step in regard to changing the status of companies that, from a tax point of view, are not resident anywhere, and we published a discussion paper a couple of months ago which is providing the basis for a discussion. We have taken the top tax practitioners in the country, who deal with all the multinationals, into our confidence and have briefed them fully, on a confidential basis, on the implications. We also have direct conversations with some of the big investors. At present we are in a pretty good space but we are not making light of this. I see it as an issue that needs to be dealt with at a policy level but getting the timing right and matching it to events as they occur, both in the competition authority in Europe and in the OECD, is important. It is aligning everything so that we can make the moves that may be necessary without any damage to reputation.

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