Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Paul Murphy raised a question about corporate tax. This is a matter that falls within the competence of every country. That is provided for in the treaties. It is our business. The common consolidated corporate tax base has been around for quite a long time. It requires unanimity. It was one of the first issues Ireland allowed on the agenda when we held the Presidency in 2013 and it ran into the sand early on. It is a complex area, as Deputy Murphy knows. It does not interfere with the rate of corporate tax but is concerned with having a common base. I can assure Deputy Murphy that there are quite a number of countries that are violently opposed to it. It resurfaces every so often, but I cannot see it actually getting anywhere, to be honest with Deputy Murphy. I did not discuss the common consolidated corporate tax base with Mr. Barnier, who had just taken up his duties on 1 October. We should make it clear that the Commission, as has been pointed out, always dealt with countries wishing to join the European Union and not countries wishing to leave. Now the expertise that is within the Commission will be used for that purpose. I want to make it perfectly clear, however, that the Commission and the former Commissioner, Mr. Barnier, will not be in a position to make decisions. The decisions will be made by the European Council, which is, in other words, the elected political Heads of Government and Heads of State as the case might be in some countries. Whatever negotiations or discussions the Commission has, it will have to come back to the European Council for a political decision.

Deputy Eamon Ryan raised the issue of special cases. Every country, I suppose, considers itself a special case. We have people living in Britain, but so have other countries. They trade with Britain, but so do we. Ours, however, goes back a couple of centuries. The common travel area has been in place since 1922. This includes not just the right to travel but the right to work in Britain, as so many hundreds of thousands of people did. We will speak as a member of the European Union. We have decided on the fiscal stability treaty, the euro, the eurozone and the European Union. Ireland, involved in these negotiations, will be speaking from the perspective of a European Union member. Obviously, however, as I agreed with the Prime Minister when I met her in Downing Street, we do not want a return to a hard Border and we want the common travel area protected. This system has worked well outside the Union and inside the Union, but it has never been tested with one outside and one inside the Union. Obviously, our trading links are important to us. Some 200,000 jobs are depending on trade either way across the Irish Sea.

Deputy Eamon Ryan has a point about energy. We will have to discuss the matter. There will be a meeting on 18 November of the North-South Ministerial Council. Following a request by the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade to them, I have asked all the Ministers to engage directly with their counterparts so that, when we go to Armagh, we can at least hope that we can reach a common agreed agenda or position or sets of positions with the parties represented in the Executive and in Northern Ireland politics. Deputy Ryan is right though. The European Union wants to end energy islands, yet we need an energy interconnector from the South to France. The big theory of Juncker's programme was that it would allow for massive infrastructure such as this and for finance and credit to be made available for that very kind of provision. If one is to end the energy island system that currently exists within the European Union, that is a case in point. Deputy Ryan is quite au faitwith this.

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