David Norris (Independent)

He stuck a good one in their eye just now in his little deal with the EU, so one can sell out on human rights as much as one wishes but one will get damn all back from the Americans.

I have the greatest pleasure in finding two items of disagreement with Senator Mansergh. The first is the business that we are all in favour of the 12.5% corporation tax deal. On the surface it is quite a good one but Professor Anton Murphy, who discovered the black hole in the Irish economy a few years ago that had to be very well looked at, was on the airwaves a couple of days ago and pointed out the dangers of this because if this situation is addressed in America as Barack Obama had suggested that it may well be, there will be a flight of that kind of capital too. Professor Murphy pointed out that there were a number of companies with about a dozen employees who were reporting profits of hundreds of millions of dollars that were not made in this country. We were being used to launder the money. We are the new Cayman islands. Beware of false profits because when that goes out all one is left with is a house of straw.