Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Like many other speakers, I sympathise with the families of those who died and those who were injured in the awful situation in Israel yesterday.

I wish to speak in respect of Senator Craughwell's contribution. I was going to speak on it anyway but the Senator has raised the EU and the reasoned opinion from the committee of which I am Vice Chairman. Other members of the committee include Senators Kieran O'Donnell, Conway-Walsh and Paddy Burke. We met on three different occasions. We met first to consider whether we would be required to have scrutiny. We then brought in witnesses from the Department, the Revenue Commissioners, the Irish Tax Institute and Christian Aid. The Irish MEPs also came in on this issue.

It is important to realise that the deadline for the receipt by the EU of any reasoned opinion is next Thursday, 17 May 2018. We only deliberated and came to our conclusion last Thursday, 10 May. It is being brought forward and it is important that we bring to the EU our consideration of this matter. We considered it in a very serious, deliberate and measured way. I will provide Members with some of the highlights of that consideration. The committee deems that the proposals are in breach of the principles of subsidiarity. It goes beyond taxation being a sovereign right and a competence for each individual state. Those proposals impinge on that right. The committee agrees that technology and digitalisation is transforming the global economy but a global response is required to devise a taxation framework and not just an EU-specific proposal. That is what is mentioned in these two proposals, COM (2018) 147 and COM (2018) 148.

The committee supports the ongoing work of the OECD. I have visited the OECD and discussed many of the things that Ireland has done in respect of the "Double Irish", country-by-country reporting, automatic exchange of information and many other things that have been going on worldwide. There needs to be an OECD or G20-type broad approach, such as the base erosion and profit shifting, BEPS, process. I am sure Senator Conway-Walsh is familiar with it. This particular proposal is a direct challenge and a risk to our corporation tax base. It is not even easy to define the digital economy but many of the proposals refer to moving it to where the populations are. We would lose and the countries with larger populations would benefit from any shifting of profits. It is a global problem. We need to look at it but we do not consider these measures appropriate. I urge the House to adopt the reasoned opinion today. We need to have it in Brussels by Thursday.