Our reply sould be this (preferably said in a gruff Offaly accent): "Shut yer pieholes or we'll lower it to 9%."
Its nonsense like this that ensures the Irish public will not vote though any more treaties for the EU.
M
You have to consider their own electorates. Bailing out Ireland and Greece, or any other country for that matter is not a popular move, especially considering we pay ourselves higher than the countries that are bailing us out. Can you imagine if the shoe was on the other foot?
We should expect an adverse reaction to us, but that shouldn't stop us negotiating hard - because the reality is that we need to negotiate hard.
But I must say I find it embarassing that we voted for Europe while they granted us 60bn, and we vote against it when it looks like we'll have to pay our share. Just like our neutrality and lack of racism, our friendliness to the EU is being shown up to be a sham.
You have to consider their own electorates. Bailing out Ireland and Greece, or any other country for that matter is not a popular move, especially considering we pay ourselves higher than the countries that are bailing us out. Can you imagine if the shoe was on the other foot?
We should expect an adverse reaction to us, but that shouldn't stop us negotiating hard - because the reality is that we need to negotiate hard.
But I must say I find it embarassing that we voted for Europe while they granted us 60bn, and we vote against it when it looks like we'll have to pay our share. Just like our neutrality and lack of racism, our friendliness to the EU is being shown up to be a sham.
From their point of view, they are help us keep our economy afloat yet we get to keep a very low corporation tax which gives us an advantage in attracting multi-nationals.
We should act in our own interests in relation to Europe and probably lower the corporation tax rate by half not only to show the EU that we are sovereign and give them the finger but to stop the hemorrhaging of jobs to eastern europe e.g Dell etc. We should have been proactive before they left. All the companies planning to exit business in Ireland should have been polled to discover where the fine line is between staying or continuing to leave. We should have looked at their books and done a deal. It costs them money to build new infrastructure abroad and it also takes time and this would have been well flagged.
We should have looked at the numbers. Each job leaving the country will be extremely difficult to replace and will incur an additional cost via social welfare payments etc. The social costs due to crime and areas becoming run down due to large numbers of newly unemployed also puts pressure on all our services. Plus when the upturn arrives globally we need to have retained our most skilled people. We paid for their education and other countries will benefit from their work if they leave. The corporation tax rate could only possibly go up once we have crunched all the many hundreds of thousands of variables, once we have companies established giving jobs which wont leave due to an increased tax rate which are here for something else we can provide. Companies which create jobs should have a better deal too. Its easier to retain jobs than to create new ones.
In the US, some states reduced their corporation tax to zero so they just get the associated spending taxes - the corporations are wetting themselves laughing at how they can take Govts for a ride.
I think we would definitely lose out on expansion plans and new investment. Obviously this equals jobs. The 12.5% tax is our primary (if not only) jobs stimulus package.It was mentioned on Prime Time a couple of weeks ago that if it was raised to 15%, it would bring in an extra 700 million. Would large multi-nationals really leave the country over this?
Each job leaving the country will be extremely difficult to replace and will incur an additional cost via social welfare payments etc.
The phrase 'race to the bottom' was levelled at Ryanair many times, oddly they are in the top 2 european airlines.
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