I think most Irish people are aware that the primary appeal of the country to multinationals is as a tax-efficient English-speaking common law bridge into the E

I think most Irish people are aware that the primary appeal of the country to multinationals is as a tax-efficient English-speaking common law bridge into the EU, in approximately that order. The specific amounts flowing across the bridge, no, I don't think people are generally aware of the numbers. But because it is a bridge, we Irish don't really have a strong claim on that money: the revenue was generated somewhere else, and it's going somewhere else, it's just resting in Ireland for a while. There's a bunch of hypocritical talk from other EU countries criticising Irish tax rates, all the while having lots of carveouts and tax breaks of their own that reduce supposedly high rates to nearly nothing in various deals. For example, France has an effective rate of about 8% on profits for companies in the the CAC40. Luxembourg is much worse, it's practically a tax haven that avoids being listed as such somehow, probably down to location. In principle I'm in favour of something like the common consolidated corporate tax base. The problem with taxing multinationals comes down to game theory: if there's a common market between countries, there's a race to the bottom in tax rates for hosting multinationals. So there needs to be a pact.