The Government is expected to reveal on Budget Day how it will spend the Apple tax windfall. The Taoiseach Simon Harris has told a gathering of the Fine Gael parliamentary meeting last night that he hopes to reveal how the 14 billion will be spent on October 1st.
Last week, the European Court of Justice agreed with the European Commission that Apple had underpaid taxes totaling €13.1bn due to Ireland between 2003 and 2014.
It meant overturning a lower court's ruling that had overruled the Commission's finding. Apple was ordered to pay the 13.1 billion euro as well as 1.2 billion euro in interest to the Irish government.
Simon Harris has already hinted that the windfall will be used to fund infrastructure. The Chief Executive of the IDA, Michael Lohan, says that's badly needed:
"We've been very clear and it continues to be that, that we need to continue to invest in infrastructure. And it's not just for enterprise, it's actually for society as a whole. Our economy ihas grown, our population has grown, and we need to make sure we keep at pace with that."
Taoiseach Simon Harris said the money should be spent on a legacy project. "You can't spend this money on recurrent day-to-day spending," he said.
"You only get it once so you can only invest it and spend it once.
"You can spend it on things that are called one-off [projects] - you can absolutely invest it in infrastructure, you can absolutely invest it in capital.
"I think that's the space we should be looking at".
