Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I welcome these statements on the Apple state aid case and the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union in favour of the European Commission. It is deeply regrettable, however, that the State spent eight years fighting the Commission's ruling of 2016 and putting corporate interests ahead of the public interest. That is almost a decade lost, and €13 billion could have been invested in so many much-needed services and infrastructure, in particular housing.

In 2016, that sum was worth an awful lot more than it is worth now in 2024. The inflation rate was something like 25% since then, so not only was the money spent fighting the case lost, but the value of that sum of money has been significantly lost to the Irish people as well. As the Commission said in 2016, Apple's tax deals had "no factual or economic justification." The Minister and his predecessors fought the decision tooth and nail, despite there being no basis for the appeal. At the time and since then, the Government has spoken nonsense about donning the green jersey, and has claimed it was acting in defence of our economic sovereignty. It was nothing of the kind; it was nothing to do with sovereignty at all. It was always about defending Apple in what was indisputably a secret sweetheart deal done by the authorities here with the imprimatur of the Government to facilitate that company. Now, all these years later, we are just expected to move on. We are told this is a legacy issue, of historical relevance only. We in the Social Democrats do not accept that for a moment. Serious questions remain about the actions of Revenue, the Department of Finance and the role of previous Governments in these special tax deals. Serious questions remain about the Government breaking state aid rules. You talk about rules-based systems very often. Here is a rules-based system, the state aid rules of the EU. You broke those rules and were found by two courts to have broken them, and you are just sweeping that under the carpet now. It does not matter if a country breaks state aid rules.

Considering what the Government has done in this, I also have to ask why the traditional double Irish structure was not used. That structure may have been unethical but it was legal at the time. Why was it not used? Why instead did the State facilitate Apple to move money within companies rather than between companies? We need to get to the bottom of this and the Minister cannot just brush it off. If we are to have trust in Revenue, we need to know how and why it granted these illegal arrangements. Did somebody in Revenue agree a figure and just work back from it? Was any report produced to support its calculations?

There are also outstanding questions about the legal and tax advice given to the Government in 2016. I would love to see that, I must say. We need to know the basis upon which the absurd decision to appeal this case was taken. After all, in addition to the loss of the value of this sum of money, which I will get back to later in terms of the price we are paying for it, there is also the question of the €10 million the Government has spent on fighting this case. Is that not counting for anything? Finally, we need to know if any other multinationals benefited from these kinds of special deals. I ask the Minister to put on the record whether there are or were other companies that got these kinds of sweetheart deals. We cannot simply turn the page on this story.

It is ironic that the Government is now talking about how it will direct the spending of this money. I listened to the Minister, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, on Sunday on the radio and I had to laugh. Having fought this case, having appealed it and said essentially that the Government was not interested in a figure of €14 billion, the Government is now saying it wants to direct how that money will be spent. Decisions around that money and the spending of it will be taken by the next Government. The Government has a neck to talk about directing how it is going to be spent. This is not just an historical case. Serious questions remain, not just about the Apple case but also our corporate tax regime generally and its implications for tax justice. While the OECD corporate tax rate agreement was welcome, it is not a panacea. The continued use of tax breaks and write-offs looks set to undermine it. After all, there is still very little transparency around corporate finances and taxation.

We could get into a shopping list, as some people have done, in respect of how this money should be spent. This is money that should have been used at the time to solve the housing crisis. Those 4,000 children who are currently homeless would have been spared that trauma and denial of rights if that money had been spent in 2016. It now has to be spent on correcting those serious errors that the Government made and trying to do some kind of catch-up in respect of the provision of social and affordable purchase homes. That is what the bulk of the money must be spent on now, to correct the serious errors the Minister's predecessors made in 2016.

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