Above:  5 Harbourmaster Place, an IFSC building which according to Cillian Doyle houses around 250 companies controlling almost €2 billion worth of assets. But with no employees. How’s that for a recovery?

Cillian Doyle of People Before Profit advises Simon Coveney to take a walk down to the IFSC and calls out Ireland on the Counter Punch website for being a tax haven in all but name.

It’s a great piece slaying much of the economic mythology our betters like to whisper to each other in our moribund media:

“Just take pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s announcement last month that it was relocating its HQ here, in another corporate inversion designed solely to slash its tax bill. This drew international condemnation with the Financial Times calling us a financial ‘black hole’, the Guardian argued that we should be ‘subject to economic sanction’, whilst US presidential hopefuls Trump, Clinton and Sanders all issued criticism of their own.

As usual our media skirted around the issue, stating obvious facts like our tax regime was ‘back in the international spotlight’, but failing to offer any serious analysis of why this was. Then  of course there was the customary denial by a top political figure, this time our Minister for Agriculture Simon Conveney, who declared ‘Nobody is using Ireland as a tax haven’.

Someone should tell poor Simon to take a stroll down to the Irish Financial Services Centre (IFSC). There he’ll find a small building located at 5 Harbour Master Place which houses around 250 companies controlling almost €2 billion worth of assets, but he won’t find any employees – because there are none.  Not even a fella to clean the brass plates on the door.”

Right, so nothing to see here then. Move along. Shoo.

Read the full thing over at the Counter Punch website.