Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I cannot figure out whether I find it amusing or appalling and sickening when I listen to lectures coming from Sinn Féin on this situation, on tax avoidance and the State losing money. I remind some of the Sinn Féin Deputies that the criminality of various people cost the State millions and maybe if Apple had been laundering a few iPads their objections might not have been quite so strong.

This issue boils down to jobs and the fact that this country has a pro-jobs policy, an inward investment policy that it can be absolutely proud of. The IDA, successive governments and the will of the Irish people have brought the best of international companies into our country. We have done that legally. We have done it right.

As someone who is pro-Europe and who has backed the EU in every referendum and decision since I was a teenager, and will continue to do so - because, fundamentally, the EU is good for Ireland and Ireland is good for it - it is with great sadness that I say we are in this situation because the Juncker Commission is possibly one of the most appalling ever. It is not there to do what a Commission is supposed to do - that is, to use its power to enforce the treaties, equally defend all member states and make sure there is balance and fairness. Its Commissioners are there to enforce their own warped political agendas at the bidding and behest of some of the big countries in the EU. In the past couple of months we watched the tragedy of a member state leaving the EU. I fought against it. I stood in this Chamber to say it should not happen. In its behaviour and the way it now seems to think it can behave towards small member states, the Commission is sowing the seeds of the destruction of the EU. We must consider whether there should be some sanction or some way of dealing with a Commission that has gone off the rails. It is no coincidence that former Commissioners say these rulings are absurd and that people who believe the Commission should be there for the reasons I believe it should do not support this political agenda. As a country we need to be very forceful about this. We have put up with, and agreed to, some things in terms of bailouts because we believed that was best for Ireland and for Europe. Now Europe needs a level playing field. It needs to recognise that all member states are equal, including the small ones.

At the heart of that is tax policy. The tax policy of a member state is that state’s concern and prerogative. The Commission cannot use a backhanded way of dipping into tax policy, calling it competition and an investigation into competition policy. Doing that is going down a slippery road because that is trying to bring in tax harmonisation. That may be what large member states want but it would be to the absolute destruction of a small member state like Ireland and the economic way in which we have built the jobs in our country over the past 20 or 30 years. If the Commission does not realise that it is going down the wrong road, the Government needs to point this out in its dealings with the Commission. Without those jobs, economic growth and the things we have been able to achieve since we joined the EU, sentiment can very quickly turn and the EU and the Commission might end up with another country that will no longer value its membership of the EU. For everybody’s sake, that would be a disaster. I urge the Commission to think again, although it has given this judgment. It needs to base its judgments on reality, leave the tax policy to the member state and be influenced not by a political agenda but by fairness.

See this speech in context