TAOISEACH LEO VARADKAR met with the acting US ambassador to Ireland in recent weeks and voiced his concerns about US President’s Donald Trump comments that Ireland is going to reduce its corporate tax rate to 8%.

In a speech in the White House’s Rose Garden in October, Trump name-checked Ireland, stating:

“You look at other countries and what they’ve done, and we’re competing with other countries,” he said. “When China is at 15% and I hear that Ireland is going to be reducing their corporate rates down to 8% from 12%.”

The Department of Finance has strongly denied Trump’s claim.

Following Trump’s speech, the Taoiseach accused the US President of “fake news”.

“It is indeed fake news,” he said at the time, stating that there is no such plan.

Speaking in the Dáil this afternoon, Varadkar said he met with Reece Smyth, the Chargé d’affaires ad interim at the US Embassy in Dublin and raised a number of issues such as tax policy and the undocumented Irish in the US.

“I did of course raise President Trump’s incorrect assertion that we are reducing our corporation profit tax to 8%, which we are not,” he said.

He said they also discussed the rise in the number of undocumented Irish migrants being arrested in America.

However, he said he has been informed by the US authorities that the majority of the Irish undocumented who have been arrested have previous convictions not relating to immigration issues.

Varadkar said the government’s special envoy to the US, John Deasy, has visited the US on numerous occasions in the last year to attempt to get some plan in place to assist Irish immigrants.

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