Ireland - A cynical tax haven?

Fintan O'Toole by Jon Berkeley

Fintan O'Toole wrote in May 2013, Ireland needs a better economic strategy than ‘come here to avoid tax'. He said: "An official White House report categorised Ireland as a tax haven in 2009 and last week’s Senate hearings on Apple’s creative accounting embedded the phrase in public discourse. If it takes permanent hold, the consequences could be enormous." He then said:

"I was browsing Forbes, the magazine for billionaires, online about a year ago. There was a piece about Ireland’s status as a tax haven. Apparently through some technological glitch, you could see that two phrases had been edited out and replaced with euphemisms. Thus “Ireland’s tax favoured status” was struck out and replaced with “Ireland’s hospitality”.

And the statement that “US companies can pretend to be headquartered in Ireland in order to avoid US tax” was doctored to say that US companies can “set up shop in Ireland”. This kind of thing is amusing, but it’s also deadly serious."

Fintan O'Toole explained how critical language is to international community's perception of Ireland:

"The Forbes piece is a perfect illustration of how vulnerable the perception of Ireland is to changes of language. Ireland is either a hospitable place where you can set up shop like a friendly village grocer or a cynical tax haven, and increasingly, in the US, it is routinely referred to as the latter.

Vincent Browne - Ireland has forever lost its sovereignty

Ireland's exit from the EU-IMF-ECB bailout programme will be sounded as the great restoration of Irish sovereignty and independence. In the words of Vincent Browne, "It will be no such thing. Just more spin." In the article in which those words were written, Vincent Browne further said that repeated claims by Enda Kenny that Ireland would soon regain it's economic sovereignty. He said:

"A year ago, in a televised address to the nation, Enda Kenny told us: “I want to be the Taoiseach that retrieves Ireland’s economic sovereignty”. He told an audience in Chicago in March 2012 that Ireland would regain its economic sovereignty by the end of this year. He told a Fine Gael conference last month that Ireland was on course to “retrieve our economic sovereignty and independence”. 

That promise is an illusion. The Lisbon Treaty, for which Enda Kenny campaigned, copperfastens Ireland’s surrender of sovereignty to the EU forever, a surrender we sleepwalked into in 1992 in ratifying the Maastricht Treaty. 

Ireland is obliged to avoid what is known as “excessive government deficits”, not just now but forever. In that connection the European Commission has indefinite authority to “monitor” our fiscal arrangements and if we get out of line, there may be consequences, including daunting fines (article 126 in what is now known as the “Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union”, a consolidation of several treaties). 

Specifically, in the case of member states that are members of the euro group, there are special requirements. “In order to ensure the proper functioning of economic and momentary union . . . The Council [of Ministers] shall . . . adopt measures . . . to strengthen the coordination and surveillance of their budgetary discipline [and] to set out economic policy guidelines for them, while ensuring that they are compatible with those adopted for the whole of the Union and are kept under surveillance” (article 136)."

Roger Scruton - Europe's shared culture tackles narrow nationalism

Roger Scruton explained the role of a common culture in tackling narrow nationalism:

"The high culture that we've been talking about hasn't really been nationalistic. Brought up on the scared Hebrew book, Latin Greek, literature and the Greek epic. No particular national inheritance and that's the great achievement of Europe - thta is has erected a high culture as a critical aparatus that allows us to put our national culture into question if we need to."

Dominic Grieve - Leaving ECHR could breach Good Friday Agreement

Dominic Grieve MP said at the Liberty Fringe event at the Conservative Conference in Manchester on September 29 2013:

"[Leaving the European Convention on Human Rights] could be interpreted as a sign that Britain is not interested in creating a better world. It could mean breaking other treaties such as the Good Friday Agreement which paved the way for peace in Northern Ireland. If we leave it then we have to take the international reputational consequences of doing so. It's a cost-benefit analysis in terms of whether we think we will benefit of doing it  and what the down sides are."