The Apple tax ruling is being portrayed as some sort of victory for Ireland. It is a strange victory where we do not get the €14.3 billion currently sitting in an escrow account. That money is to be added on to Apple's massive cash pile and we cannot use it for housing provision, creating green jobs and avoiding climate catastrophe. I saw coverage of the Minister at a press conference yesterday celebrating this victory and talking about how it shows that we have equality of treatment for taxpayers in this country. …

Does the Minister agree that the grounds upon which the court found in favour of Ireland and Apple were very narrow? It did not find that Apple was not availing of a 0.0005% tax rate. It did not find that Ireland was not a tax haven. It simply found that the tax rulings which were available to Apple did not constitute state aid because they could have been available to other companies as well. That is the essence of the ruling that "the Commission did not succeed in showing .... that, by issuing the contested tax r…

The problem with basing a big portion of one's economic strategy on being one of the world's top ten tax havens, according to a paper produced by the IMF, is that it is not only immoral but also is completely unsustainable because ultimately, Ireland Inc. cannot win this race to the bottom. It can be outbid by a tax rate of 0.004% or 0.003%. The only winners in this race to the bottom that Ireland is driving with headline and actual corporation tax rates are the big corporations. The losers are those on trolleys an…

I thank the Acting Chairman. I want to ask about the banks and the rip-off that is currently going on of the 160.000 people who availed of a mortgage break. The banks, obviously, originally lied and stated that they had to charge interest before it was revealed that they did not have to. They have been choosing to charge interest costing a married couple on average over €6,000. The question is, what will the Minister do about it? How will he stop this rip-off?

What the Minister is actually saying is he will not do anything about this rip-off. He is saying that what is being done is good enough and people should be happy about it. He is saying that there is nothing he can do about a cost of more than €6,000 a year for a couple in which one or both have lost their jobs and who are facing a crisis situation and he is not even looking to do anything about it. He does not mind that the banks lied to him and lied to the public and that they are able to get away with that. That…

The Deputy's party leader, the Tánaiste, says that he does not fully trust the banks not to profiteer from this situation. The Minister is not even saying that. He is asking us to look at the good stuff the Government has done elsewhere rather than at the absolute scandal whereby banks were, correctly, pressurised to offer mortgage breaks but, when people took up those mortgage breaks because of the crisis, continued to load interest upon them. These are people who cannot afford to pay. The banks have scandalously …

My question relates to the upcoming July stimulus. In particular, how does the Minister intend to avoid giving large amounts of corporate welfare to profitable corporations? There are already profitable companies benefiting from the temporary wage subsidy scheme. One example is Aramark, which employs cleaners in Galway University Hospital. The company is benefiting from the temporary wage subsidy scheme and is paying its workers the minimum wage while getting paid the same amount as previously from the hospital. It…

There are multiple companies in receipt of substantial State assistance in the form of the temporary wage subsidy scheme which are mistreating their workers. Dublin Airport Authority is attempting to lay off 1,000 workers and to replace them with agency staff. That is a State-owned company. Aer Lingus and Ryanair have also been attacking their workers. Does the Minister not agree that there needs to be basic conditions in the proposals for the July stimulus which would require companies availing of State supports n…

This controversy is not over. The Taoiseach has sacked Deputy Cowen to try to draw a line under it and he is spinning furiously about what he knew in an attempt to evade responsibility. However, the essence of the matter is very clear and it will come out. The Taoiseach colluded with the then Minister to keep vital information from the Dáil. They relied on legal threats to keep that vital information from the media. If it was not for The Sunday Times publishing the article, including the reference to the Garda repo…

Page 119 of the programme for Government contains a promise for political reform. That promise appears, at the very least, a little aspirational now. I have a simple question for the Taoiseach. If The Sunday Times had not published the story about the Garda report last Sunday, is it not the case that the Taoiseach would not have asked Deputy Cowen to answer questions in the Dáil? Is it also not the case that the Taoiseach was relying on legal threats to gag the media and that he had agreed previously with Deputy Co…

I did not say that.

Answer the question.

The Sunday Times -----

The headlines read "Ireland wins appeal in €13 billion Apple tax case". It is some victory when one of the richest corporations in the world gets to hang on to €14.1 billion and add it to a cash pile of over $100 billion. That money is not available to tackle the problems that exist here, where one in four people is unemployed, 10,000 people are homeless and we need urgently to invest to avoid climate catastrophe. It raises the question of which Ireland has won. Who does the Government represent? This brings to min…

Last week, the Minister, Deputy Cowen, was shielded from having to face questions by a vote in this House. That was a mistake. The consequence of this was a drip feed of information, which is precisely what the Minister said would be damaging. The information which emerged over the weekend is very serious for the two reasons. The first is that the record itself describes a supposed attempt to evade a checkpoint and the second is that the Minister has made the very serious assertion that this record is incorrect. Ea…

I really do not think that is accurate. The Taoiseach was aware at the time of the statement by the Minister, Deputy Cowen. I hope that those who have made statements outside the House as to the need for the Minister to answer questions will vote in favour of him doing so now, in order that we can have questions and answers, rather than a continuing drip feed.

This is a transparent attempt to kick this off the agenda for a year. That is how long we are talking about. It is a question of accountability to the Dáil. The Minister, Deputy Cowen, has made very serious statements about the veracity of what is contained in the Garda record. He is currently a Minister and he has to be accountable to the Dáil. If he does not want to be accountable to the Dáil until these processes have concluded, then he cannot continue as a Minister until they have concluded and then he can come…

One woman, Emma, wrote that they brought their baby home on 27 March where their adoring family looked at her through a window and that their hearts were broken not being able to share their miracle baby with their family. She says she was so upset and so sad she could not even hold her mother, that she was on her own for all of the labour except for ten minutes and that her husband barely made the birth. She says they have had a hard start and continues to detail that hard start. Emma says this is what her materni…

It is not agreed. I understand that the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Cowen, is due to give a personal statement today on his drink-driving offence. It is not acceptable for us that he would be able to give a statement and there would not be opportunities for questions from the Opposition and answers from the Minister, as was the case and became the precedent on numerous occasions in the previous Dáil. There are, as the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Eamo…

It is not, as we have the right to reject the Order of Business today.