Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That is another deadline missed as the Minister promised that the escrow account would be in place in the first quarter and, indeed, he previously said it would be in place before the end of last year but that is not the issue. The issue is our tax code and the restructure in 2015 after Apple was caught out by the Commission. It is clear that there cannot be a restructure for the main purpose of avoiding tax. Apple said that the new restructure in 2015 was for the primary purpose of tax arrangements. That is not allowed in the Irish tax code. The Commission identified that there was a €2.5 billion profit in 2014 but that profit evaporated in 2015. The Government and the Revenue Commissioners are facilitating Apple once again in avoiding the payment of a tax liability of between €2.5 billion and €3 billion each year since 2015. Unless the Minister gets his house in order, he will continue to be attacked by people in Davos and elsewhere regarding our tax sovereignty because he is allowing this to happen on his watch. He needs to investigate this and establish whether this provision in our tax code was applied to Apple's restructure in 2015.

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