Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

101. To ask the Minister for Finance the extent to which his Department continues to rebut the suggestions from persons in the European Commission to the effect that Ireland has a responsibility to collect taxes on profits earned in jurisdictions other than Ireland; his views on whether this is an interference with Ireland's internal taxation policy; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45068/17]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Ireland has never accepted the Commission’s analysis in the Apple State Aid Decision. An appeal has therefore been brought before the European Courts. Such an appeal takes the form of an application to the General Court of the European Union, asking it to annul the Decision of the Commission.

The Attorney General prepared the legal grounds in support of the annulment proceedings and the application has been lodged in the General Court of the European Union. As is normal practice, a summary of these has been published in the Official Journal of the European Union. This has also been published on the Department of Finance’s website.

As outlined in this published summary, one of the main lines of argument in Ireland's annulment application is that the Commission has exceeded its powers and interfered with national tax sovereignty. The Commission has no competence, under State Aid rules, unilaterally to substitute its own view of the geographic scope and extent of the Member State’s tax jurisdiction for those of the Member State itself.

As this topic is the subject of open legal proceedings, it will not be possible to comment further, in particular on any of the individual elements of the State's legal case in defence of our position. This is important to ensure that we do not prejudice our own legal case.