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

Why does the Government not enforce the European Commission's decision on Apple? Why does it not say we will take the money back, the billions of euro in tax these guys have managed to evade by way of sharp accounting practice? Our society and economy are paying a terrible price for it and it must stop. However, there is no will to do it.

The comments of the Minister, Deputy Noonan, as reported on the front of today's The Irish Times, suggest that although he understands he has to say he wants to see something done about this, he does not want to go too far. The mantra of this Government is that tax competition is a good thing. The tax specialist Richard Murphy, who has done more than any other individual to expose this practice on an international level, told us at a briefing last week that there is no such thing as good tax competition because the taxpayer, the society and the economy always lose when there is a race to the bottom in terms of corporate tax competition. There might be a short-term gain, but the long-term effect is staggering levels of inequality and the concentration of profits and wealth in the hands of multinationals that essentially hold whole Governments and economies hostage. Just as the multinationals have an aggressive policy of avoiding tax, we must have an aggressive policy of making them pay their taxes, which is something they have not been doing in recent times.

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