detail about the tech topics that will be given an airing; there’s an almost Apple-like reticence to reveal too much about the product, which now includes sister events Collision (Toronto), RISE (Hong Kong) and MoneyConf, which this year moves from Dublin to Lisbon to run along- side Web Summit. One important tech subject he
does refer to, though, is “taxation” and he aims some pointed barbs at his own country. “It’s the single most important issue,” he says. “No country on earth outside of Ireland has been more successful in stifling otherwise taxable revenue out of the western world than Ireland, and the hundreds of billions that we put beyond the reach of tax authorities in the UK and and mainland Eu-
“WE’VE DONE VERY LITTLE DIFFERENT EXCEPT WE BUILD A LOT OF OUR OWN SOFTWARE”
Paddy Cosgrave, Co-Founder, Web Summit
rope has had a crushing effect on the prospects of the middle classes. I think that is probably the most interesting and most worrisome issue involving the tech sector at the moment.” So what’s the solution, I ask?
“Stop allowing countries like Ireland a free ride like parasites on the side of 500 million hard-work- ing Europeans,” he adds, pointedly. “Essentially, Ireland’s a member of a tennis club or a golf club and it doesn’t pay its membership fees, and it pockets other people’s membership fees for itself; if the other members in the tennis club, the golf club or the rugby club were to get together, finally, I think they would reprimand Ireland and boot them out of the club.” In one
tax avoidance case in August 2016, the European Commission ruled that Apple benefited from illegal tax benefits allowed from 2003 to 2014 and had to pay back over €15bn to the Irish Government. Te so-called ‘Double Irish’ structure has been called into question and is part of a protracted legal wrangle. From his fiery rhetoric Cosgrave,
a graduate of Ireland’s prestigious Trinity College, clearly doesn’t sound as though he will be bringing Web Summit back to his homeland – which he also describes as like a “severe drug addict” – and it will be interesting to see how taxation forms part of the agenda at this year’s event. If one thing’s for sure, it’s that it will be unlikely to feature Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar. n
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