Results 11,681-11,700 of 26,924 for speaker:Richard Boyd Barrett

Written Answers — Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport: Tourism Funding (2 Feb 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: 325. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the amount of funding that was allocated to the Dún Laoghaire constituency for tourism and hospitality skills training in 2015 and 2016 by his Department; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4997/17]

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: Minister for Finance and Office of the Revenue Commissioners (2 Feb 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: I just want to follow up on the previous round of questions. The Minister should know the answers to these questions because he has decided to appeal a Commission ruling which states that we are owed €13 billion plus interest, money this State could do with. I want to know, and I suspect many in the wider public want to know, why the Minister decided to pay millions of euro to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: Minister for Finance and Office of the Revenue Commissioners (2 Feb 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: Minister for Finance and Office of the Revenue Commissioners (2 Feb 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Not based on facilitating tax evasion.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: Minister for Finance and Office of the Revenue Commissioners (2 Feb 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: The explanation for why Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour might have decided to support the appeal is of course that they were all in government over the years that this took place and if the ruling goes against the Government and Apple, they are all implicated in this. That is why they have decided to vote against it. The Minister has not given an argument that is in any way convincing...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: Minister for Finance and Office of the Revenue Commissioners (2 Feb 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: The IP does not rest in the United States.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: Minister for Finance and Office of the Revenue Commissioners (2 Feb 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: It was incorporated in Ireland in a ghost company operating out of a company that was tax resident here.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: Minister for Finance and Office of the Revenue Commissioners (2 Feb 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: It is difficult to contain one's frustration in all of this. In my case, I put forward a motion to this committee in 2013 asking that Apple representatives be brought in to answer some of these questions. The Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour parties all banded together to ensure that it did not happen. They even turned off the cameras while we were discussing it. This is the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: Minister for Finance and Office of the Revenue Commissioners (2 Feb 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: I know this. Time is very short and I do not wish to be rude, but I understand those distinctions.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: Minister for Finance and Office of the Revenue Commissioners (2 Feb 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Does Revenue not have any obligation if Ireland is being used in some way? Any company that is incorporated in Ireland is using Ireland in some sense. For example, the witness mentioned earlier how Ireland is ultimately under the jurisdiction of the European Court as a member of the European Union. Does Revenue not feel any responsibility or obligation whatsoever if Ireland is being used...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: Minister for Finance and Office of the Revenue Commissioners (2 Feb 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: That is not really what I asked Mr. Cody, in fairness, and my time is extremely limited here.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: Minister for Finance and Office of the Revenue Commissioners (2 Feb 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: I am not asking Mr. Cody what Revenue does. I am asking him a very direct question: does he feel an obligation to do anything if he believes a company is in any way using Ireland to exploit loopholes to evade or avoid tax or does he simply say that if it does not affect us, we are not bothered? It is a very simple question, in fairness.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: Minister for Finance and Office of the Revenue Commissioners (2 Feb 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: No. The suggestion, which is very clear and which I think Mr. Cody understands fully, is that all of us find it simply incredible - not credible - that Revenue did not notice quite some time ago, long before 2013, that a company that was incorporated here was stateless, that the profits from a company that did have a real economic presence here were being siphoned into the stateless company...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: Minister for Finance and Office of the Revenue Commissioners (2 Feb 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Revenue did not flag it.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: Minister for Finance and Office of the Revenue Commissioners (2 Feb 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: No.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: Minister for Finance and Office of the Revenue Commissioners (2 Feb 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Therefore, the-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: Minister for Finance and Office of the Revenue Commissioners (2 Feb 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: That is my point. Mr. Cody is saying the US Administration knew beforehand. If any reasonable person saw that an incorporated company was either resident in the Cayman Islands or stateless - certainly if Revenue did - he or she would think there was something going on there. We are a little surprised that Revenue did not flag this - or did Revenue flag it way back when, when it became...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: Minister for Finance and Office of the Revenue Commissioners (2 Feb 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: I ask Mr. Cody to remind me, as a matter of interest, when the criteria of ownership and control, the distinction between a tax resident and an incorporated body, were introduced in legislation.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: Minister for Finance and Office of the Revenue Commissioners (2 Feb 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: I will move onto another aspect of this because one can come at it from many different ways. If Niall Cody develops a phone and holds the intellectual property for that phone and if he sells the intellectual property to me, the profits I generate from selling the phone accrue to me, do they not?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: EU State Aid Rules - Investigation into Preferential Tax Rulings: Minister for Finance and Office of the Revenue Commissioners (2 Feb 2017)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Did Apple Inc. have the intellectual property rights for the sales of Apple products in Europe, Africa and Asia? Mr. Cody referred to them and kept saying, as the Minister has said, that we know Apple Inc. was managed in and controlled from the United States and that that is where the intellectual property was developed. However, it is irrelevant whether it was developed there. The issue...