THREAD @davidmcw has made a daring proposal on making Ireland a “cutting-edge global leader”.
I will respond to the ideas below.
I will respond to the ideas below.
2. @davidmcw argues that Ireland has a problem in straddling the Atlanticist and EU horses and corporate tax in particular is emerging as an acute issue.
3. @davidmcw says Ireland “isn’t really a European economy at all”. Actually, Ireland sends about 16% of exports to US, 13% to UK and more than 40% to EU. That looks like a pretty European economy to me.
4. @davidmcw completely misses the degree to which EU economic integration results in Ireland being more and more integrated with and interdependent on the EU economy.
5. @davidmcw revisits the familiar ‘Boston v Berlin’ argument. But we should remember it is because of Berlin that Boston is possible. It is membership of the EU Single Market that is absolutely crucial for Ireland.
6. If we have learned anything from observing the UK’s self-induced Brexit meltdown it is that membership of the Single Market and EU rules-based system is crucial to economic outcomes.
7. @davidmcw suggests Ireland looks@like a small, trading Hanseatic League-type global trading state. He misses the deep legal interdiction inherent in EU system. We are NOT footloose and fancy-free: EU rules are deep and substantive.
8. @davidmcw seems to think we are still living in the era of the Great Powers and the Corn Laws. The bigger players in the EU (France, Germany) are not predatory outlaws. They are our partners in a rules-based system.
9. @davidmcw May be right that we have successfully straddled both Atlanticist and EU horses. But Brexit makes our choice crystal clear: it is Berlin and EU over some peripheral Atlanticist status.
10. For all the potential downsides (agrifood, customs checks, supply chain disruption), Brexit could bring Ireland huge advantages. If FDI is displaced from UK Ireland could be the biggest winner among EU27 (US MNCs need tarring-free access to SM)
11. I think @davidmcw over-states the ‘Macron factor’. Certainly Macron wants to accelerate EU integration, but he must persuade 27 other EU states, not least Germany. And he has to deliver on his domestic agenda before reforming EU.
12. Again to suggest that Macron’s call for ‘More Europe’ will automatically result in further and faster EU integration misunderstands the considerable legislative thresholds (OLP) to be reached if these measures are to be enacted.
13. To present Ireland’s economic future as a binary choice is to misunderstand how European integration works. We are NOT a Hanseatic state at the periphery of EU. We are increasingly part of the core of EU. Brexit will amplify this further.
14. It is simply daft to suggest that Ireland “could reinvent the relationship between the state and the corporation”. To repeat, Ireland is a member of a Rules-based system of voluntary integration. The EU Apple tax case demonstrates this reality in spades.
15. @davidmcw is entirely right to emphasize the inequity of MNC practices in Ireland, where employees of tech behemoths pay 50% tax/social insurance while their employers pay virtually nothing. That has to change.
16. One way to deal with the ‘Tax Gap’ would be for Ireland to declare that no corporation should pay less than a ‘floor’ of 12.5% tax, irrespective of which part of their operation in Dublin brings in the revenue.
17. Here again the EU could be the most important vehicle for getting MNCs to pay the kind of tax contribution @davidmcw wants them to pay. The EU is part of the solution here, not the problem. Commissioner Verstager as made a good start with Apple decision.
18. @davidmcw makes a radical proposal here but he completely neglects the response our EU partners AND the Commission might make to this. We cannot be both inside ANd outside EU rules.
19. Our EU partners would resile from allowing Ireland to “have its cake and eat it”: David’s proposal would still see Ireland facilitating tax avoidance on huge scale. Worse, we would be directly benefiting if we received the €9billion in shares he suggests. #willnotfly
20. The proposal again reflects a failure of understanding of how the model of deep economic, governance and institutional interdependence works in the EU. In many ways it reflects the same mistaken logic of the Brexit jihadists in UK.
21. No more than the UK, Ireland will not and cannot be allowed to “have its cake and eat it” inside the European Union.
22. Can @davidmcw really imagine our EU partners standing by and not objecting as Ireland accumulates a sovereign wealth fund worth upwards of €150bn, built upon colluding with MNCs and cheating our partner states of much-needed tax revenue? I can’t.
23. @davidmcw argues his proposal would help reduce income and wealth inequality in Ireland. But how can he ignore the obvious: that it would increase significantly inequality between Ireland and other EU states(20 of whom are already poorer than Ireland)?
24. Far from “getting us out of a scrap with Brussels” it would leave Ireland isolated at precisely the time we are trying to forge new alliances with partner states within the EU. It would see us drift towards Trump’s US and Brexitstan.
25. Finally, the big mistake @davidmcw makes is the same one the UK has made: under-estimating the deep structural entrenchment of EU rules within our economy and foreign policy. This is a ‘big idea’ that can be consigned to the scrap heap without hesitation. ENDS.
