Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the motion on this EU proposal. Essentially, we need to set out, in layman's language, what the proposal contains. Under this EU proposal, it is proposed that companies with revenues in excess of a turnover of €750 million will be obliged to publicly disclose financial information for each country within the EU with which they do business. In addition to that, they will be asked to supply information regarding their turnover, taxes paid, profit before tax, number of employees, the nature of their activities and accumulated earnings. On the face of it, I believe some people would say that is a good idea.

The problem with the way the EU has gone about bringing forward this proposal is that it has introduced it under a company law directive, but essentially the proposal before us is about taxation. The EU was disingenuous in introducing a taxation measure, trying to slip it in under a company law directive. That is essentially the reason our committee, on which I served with the chairman, has a problem with this. If the EU has said this is a taxation proposal and that it would put it through the relevant finance committees, it could have been debated for what it, is but it tried to slip it in under a different heading. That was a sneaky move on its part and it deserves to be pulled up on it. It is also damaging to the EU and it is no wonder the people in England have a problem with the EU when this is how it goes about its business.

We discussed at the committee the fact that 6,000 companies across the EU could be affected by this proposal but it said that in Ireland up to 47 companies could be affected. We asked the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment how many of those 47 companies are indigenous companies such as Kerry Co-Op, Cement Roadstone and Glanbia, but it was not able to provide that figure. It said that neither Revenue nor the Central Statistics Office could give us the information and it referred us to TheSunday Timestop 1,000 companies. That was the publication to which Department referred the committee yesterday for us to establish how this proposal would affect Irish companies. All the members of our committee received that e-mail referring us to the top 1,000 companies in The Sunday Times supplement. They might have a look at that. It was the official response from the Department and was wholly inadequate. I am not criticising the Department exclusively for the problem here as the problem emanated with the EU.

Many people would say we need to increase taxation co-operation across EU level and to close off some of the loopholes referred to in regard to non-co-operative tax jurisdictions.

To the rest of us, that is a tax haven. In European language, however, it is called a non-co-operative tax jurisdiction. They do not specify who decides who should be on this list, whether the list can change from country to country or whether one will be on it next year if one is on it this year. It is a badly thought out proposal on the part of the EU and an attempt to sneak it in under company law. Somebody in that section has an agenda in regard to taxation and should have been upfront that this was a taxation proposal. In that case, we would have dealt with it under the base erosion and profit sharing proposals being discussed at European level so that there can be harmonisation in regard to these taxation measures. However, they chose to go the opposite way because they know the Commission does not have competence to set taxation rates or interfere with taxation in regard to corporate or personal taxation rates in any of the EU member states. They decided to call it an accounting directive and slip a taxation measure in through the back door. They have been caught out on that.

Already, our friends in Sweden, who we met the other night, have issued a similar direction to the EU to the one we propose to approve this evening. Tonight is the last date for the Parliament to respond. I support the proposal that we should send an opinion to the EU to the effect that it is not within the competence of the EU to do this under the directive and if it wants to reconsider and come back to it properly at a later date, that is another day's work. They should not be doing it here now. I have grave concerns about the fact that we do not know what impact this will have on indigenous Irish business and, indeed, they have not even attempted to specify it. I revert to the comment I made a few minutes ago. It is no wonder that there is a referendum on Brexit in the UK. I have no idea if they will even have time to discuss it this week, but if people in Britain saw that this proposal was before the House of Commons, it would greatly help the Leave campaign if they saw what Europe was at behind their backs. I say to the eurocrats at the Commission who dream up these things, it is not for the good of the EU that they go about their business in this way. It harms the EU to go about business in this back-handed way. Thank God, there are alert committees in our Parliament and in the Swedish Parliament that can see what is going on. We are calling a halt and saying they do not have the authority to do this. They must go away and redraft.

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