SIMON WATKINS

REMEMBER the big row over Ireland, the EU and billions of pounds in taxpayers’ money? No, not the recent Apple tax battle, I mean the bailout of the Irish economy in 2010.

Back then, EU member countries – including the UK – underwrote tens of billions of pounds worth of cheap loans to help restore order to the Irish financial system, which like many had been ravaged by the financial crisis. Unlike the UK, Ireland was too small (and stuck inside the euro) to manage its crisis without a little help from its neighbours.

At the time it was mooted that perhaps Ireland should be required to start charging companies higher taxes. Even then fellow EU states were enraged by Ireland’s low corporation tax rate, which they regarded as encouraging multinationals to channel their revenues through Ireland to avoid paying higher rates of tax in other EU countries. In 2010, Ireland successfully fought off the pressure to raise its corporate taxes, but it accepted harsh austerity which squeezed its citizens still and got its bailout.

Which is why it’s now a bit rum for Ireland to start claiming that in the Apple case, the EU has overstepped the mark and is interfering in its sovereign rights.

Not only does Ireland have a low corporation tax rate, but it allowed Apple to set up companies that had no taxable location, meaning that in effect it paid virtually no tax at all on a high proportion of its business.

Without that structure, Apple would have paid more tax over the last 12 years, either in Ireland (which would have been useful during its financial crisis when every little might have helped) or perhaps even in other EU countries including the UK.

Most British citizens already feel a simmering fury at the Irish-centred tax dodges engineered by many global companies.

It is simply extraordinary that Ireland is surprised that the European Commission has taken a hard line on the Apple case. It may eventually emerge that legally this cannot be made to stick, but the fairness of this case from the point of view of taxpayers across the rest of Europe is unanswerable.

And there is also an echo here for Britain and our own future. Britain is preparing to leave the EU, but we are not even close to deciding the terms of our relationship with it. Some aggressive Brexiteers have argued that we could set ourselves up as a low corporation tax economy and so lure big business to Britain in a similar way to Ireland.

It is crucial we negotiate the best trade links possible for our future relationship with the EU. We would not secure that by sticking two fingers up to every taxcollecting government on the Continent. Ask Ireland.