Catherine Noone (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I support Senator Paul Coghlan on the damage caused by vandals to the cross at the top of Carrauntoohil which, as part of the Oireachtas charity walking group, I had the pleasure to climb. It is nice to have a photograph taken at the top which is identified by the cross. It is a shame vandalism had to occur at the top of it.

I wish to raise a European taxation issue. A PwC report at the weekend highlighted Ireland's effective corporation tax rate as being 12.4%, 0.1% away from the official figure of 12.5%. For business, this means that what one sees is what one gets. Businesses across all sectors pay, more or less, the same effective rate. In other words, this proves what many of us already knew that our corporation tax is transparent and fair. This is a point which needs to be emphasised and made clear to our European neighbours. Other countries that compete with us and are concerned about our rate of corporation tax, as well as elements within the country such as the Socialist Party, in order to score political points, have attempted to suggest multinational corporations are not paying corporation tax. As proved in the report, this is incorrect. Ireland's corporation tax rate is fair and transparent. Other nations envy our success.

The Socialist Party wants to see that success end. If we compare other nations, some of which are praised by the Socialist Party as so-called fair tax nations, we can see that France, although it has a stated corporation tax of 33.3% has a real rate of 7.4%, according to the report. That is a hefty gap of over 25 percentage points between what France says a corporation will pay and the average that it actually pays. In Ireland there is no such gap. There is no litany of loopholes or a bureaucratic bible that one must ram through just to set up a business. That is why Ireland is such an attractive location for business. It is an important point that is worth raising.