Michael Noonan isolated in Europe on Apple issue

THERE was a whiff of irony in the air at yesterday’s meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Bratislava where Ireland’s normally popular minister Michael Noonan (in Europe, at any rate) found himself somewhat isolated.

If he thought it would be easy to begin the task of justifying the Government’s decision to appeal the EU Commission’s ruling on the €13 billion Apple affair at a meeting with tax evasion on the agenda, he experienced what could be described as a rude awakening.

No sooner had he met his peers than the EU’s economics commissioner Pierre Moscovici described the move to appeal the ruling as a “strange” decision. Posing the question that many people in this country have been asking since EU competition commissioner launched her multi-billion euro rocket with Ireland and Apple both in the line of fire.