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Our ability to make a decision about the declaration is hampered by the British government being reluctant to give us the clarification which we require.

God forbid that the United Kingdom should take a lead and introduce a sensible tax system of its own which would probably comprise a very low level of corporation tax - tax on corporate profits - and perhaps a low level of corporate sales tax, because sales are where they are, and sales in this country are sales here, which we can tax here.

Is there any reason why the American people should be taxed to guarantee the debts of banks, any more than they should be taxed to guarantee the debts of other institutions, including merchants, the industries, and the mills of the country?

At the heart of the Irish economy has always been the philosophy of tax competitiveness. On the cranky left, that is very annoying; I can see that.

The real problem at the moment is that the banks - because of their existing culture, which is frankly anti-business, obsession with short-term trading profits, not focusing on the long term - are throttling the recovery of British industry.

I think people have a legitimate right to minimise their tax obligations if they can, but they should pay their fair whack. I do think it's important to be transparent.

I am not in favour of the takeover of excellent and strategically important British companies by struggling foreign firms whose actions are fuelled by tax avoidance, and who want to asset-strip the intellectual property of the British company and then dismember it.

The idea seems to be to use the next treaty talks to strike a grand bargain: Britain will be helpful to those states wishing to establish a fiscal union among themselves if, in exchange, we can amicably derogate from the aspects of the EU which we dislike.

It is all very well and it sounds very seductive to say we are going to have harmonisation of regulations, but for example the way that funds are distributed around the states these days, you are positively penalised if you actually want to have say a lower payroll tax or sort of conditions.