Apple tax ruling must ring alarm bells for NI Executive

Green Party representative in the South-West, Tanya Jones, is warning politicians here not to repeat mistakes of their southern counterparts.

An EU ruling on Apple's tax affairs south of the border should serve as a warning to the Northern Ireland Executive, that's according to the Green Party's South West representative Tanya Jones.

She says that looser regulatory arrangements and lower levels of coporate taxation in the Republic of Ireland are "economically unsustainable" and "morally wrong". 

"It has been clear for a long time that the Irish Republic’s dependence upon foreign direct investment, and its provision of a – let us say remarkably generous – corporate tax and regulatory regime is as much a bubble as the Celtic Tiger property boom," she told Q radio.

"It is both economically unsustainable and morally wrong, forcing ordinary taxpayers to pay for the infrastructure that rich corporations rely upon, and depriving the poorest countries in the world of desperately needed revenue," she added.

She was speaking after corporate giant Apple was told it had to pay €13 billion in back taxes by European authorities.

Now she says she hopes politicians north of the border don't follow suit.

"I hope that our Executive, whose economic strategy seems to be to follow the Republic’s folly as closely as possible, will take note before continuing any further down this cul-de-sac," she said.

"We have all we need in Northern Ireland: a skilled and enthusiastic workforce, creative and innovative ideas and abundant natural renewable resources, to build a sustainable, thriving and fair economy on the firm foundations of our own enterprise.  Investment in the people and businesses of Northern Ireland, and in the infrastructure and improvements we need, especially in the West, would reap a far richer harvest than chasing after multinational mirages," she added.