Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach's reply refers to a lot of contact, which is appropriate given the urgency of the situation and the centrality of the Brexit issue. It is difficult to know what the outcome will be because it is hard to figure out the Government's position on some of these issues. I refer in particular to the decision by the European Court of Justice. The European Commission confirmed today that it is taking the State to the European Court of Justice for the failure to recover up to €13 billion of tax due from Apple. The Taoiseach will remember that last August the Commission ordered Apple to pay unpaid taxes as it ruled the firm had received illegal state aid in a sweetheart deal.

Apple is appealing this, which is fair enough, but that is not good enough for the Government. Not only does it not want to get the money back for taxpayers, it is also appealing the decision. I am sure we will be told by the Minister for Finance next week that there is very little money available and that the priority must be to balance the books, whatever that means. Households cannot balance their books, but I am sure we will be told resources are limited, yet there has been no effort made to recover the money and now we must pay huge amounts in dealing with the court cases, the appeal and the Commission's decision to take us to the European Court of Justice. Will the Government drop its appeal which has already cost €3.6 million? When I raised the issue of the use of Translarna earlier, the Taoiseach said there was a cost factor. We could collect the taxes owed by Apple. It would go a long way towards dealing with these difficulties within the health service and the housing emergency and also save the taxpayer the millions we will now have to pay out in dealing with two court cases.

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