DUBLIN: Google’s operation in Dublin is integral to its global business but the organisation insists the advent of the Alphabet holding company structure will have no bearing at all on the Irish unit.
“The restructuring announcement re Alphabet will have no implications for Google Ireland,” said a Google spokeswoman in Dublin.
The Irish division, which employs almost 5,000 people, is seen as a bellwether of the internet giants who have made their home in the Silicon Docks area. Google’s arrival in Ireland in 2003 is credited as the catalyst that encouraged other Californian firms to follow suit.
The company continues to deepen its Irish roots. Last year it spent €65 million to buy the Grand Mill Quay building at Barrow Street. Aggregate payroll costs in 2013, when it employed 2,288 on average, were €273 million.
Google is a big beneficiary of Ireland’s corporate tax regime. Its annual report says Ireland is one of two “major tax jurisdictions”, the other being the US.
Still, its tax affairs here are not without controversy. The company is known to have deployed the controversial “double Irish” tax mechanism, which plays on differences between Irish laws and the law in other jurisdictions to help firms based here to curtail the tax due on their profit.
In the face of mounting international pressure, the Government resolved last October to phase out the “double Irish” and close it off to new entrants. In advance of that move, ranking Irish officials expressed concern that the scheme was undermining the State’s “international tax credibility”.
