Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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310. To ask the Minister for Finance his views on the failure of the European Commission to publish the report on its decision in the case of a company (details supplied); if he will engage with the European Commission to secure the publication of its report, taking into account that a redacted version could be published to omit market sensitive information; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [25898/16]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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On 30 August, the European Commission announced that it had issued a negative decision in the Apple State aid case.  The Commissioner held a press conference and published a press release setting out the basis of the decision.

At the same time, the Commission privately wrote to Ireland setting out its full opinion in a detailed and technical legal document.

This document contains highly sensitive commercial information relating to the taxpayer involved.  As is the usual process, the taxpayer will be given the opportunity to identify extracts that are commercially sensitive, before it is published by the Commission.

The Commission has set a deadline to be notified of the extracts that will need to be redacted and it is important that this timeline be respected. The procedure being applied mirrors that which was used for the cases against the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, where it took several months for the Commission to make a copy of the decisions publicly available.  This approach is also consistent with the process that was followed for the Commission's opening decision in the Apple case in 2014.