Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I live in Blackpool on the north side of Cork city. The Apple headquarters in Hollyhill are a 30 minute walk from my front door. If I take a walk there, I am high up above the city and can see schools that are underfunded, where parents have to organise fundraising drives at Christmas time to keep the schools patched up. I can see hospitals that are underfunded, with patient waiting lists and increasing numbers, once again, in their emergency departments.

In other words, from that vantage point one can see with one's own eyes the need for serious taxes to be levied on those who can afford it, on the super-wealthy and the big corporations in Irish society, like Apple, which make super profits. They are meant to pay a 12.5% tax rate on those super profits. The European General Court in Luxembourg found today that the Republic of Ireland did not give Apple illegal state aid but it also found that Ireland charged Apple tax at the rate of 1% in 2003 and 0.005% in 2014. All it has said is that that was legal. It says a lot about the law in this country if fabulously wealthy multinationals can be charged tax at that rate. While the court found that it was legal, it put it a slightly different way by saying that it could not say with certainty that it was illegal. The Commission should appeal that ruling and everyone who wants to see better hospitals and schools and less inequality in Irish society will support that sentiment.

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