Unite says Bono’s remarks on 12.5% corporation tax will be ‘regarded with derision’ by Irish people living in poverty

Bono’s statement that Ireland’s “tax competitiveness has brought our country the only prosperity we’ve known” will be regarded with derision by Irish people suffering deprivation and poverty, one of the Republic’s largest unions has said.

Unite, which represents 100,000 workers on the island of Ireland, launched a blistering attack on the U2 singer for remarks in the Observer defending the 12.5% tax rate on corporations enjoyed by multinational companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon.

“We are a tiny little country, we don’t have scale, and our version of scale is to be innovative and to be clever, and tax competitiveness has brought our country the only prosperity we’ve known,” Bono said.

“That’s how we got these [tech] companies here. Little countries, we don’t have natural resources, we have to be able to attract people. We’ve been through the 50s and the 60s, and mass haemorrhaging of our population all over the world. There are more hospitals and firemen and teachers because of [Ireland’s tax] policy.”

But Unite pointed out that one in four Irish people have to endure social deprivation, according the state’s own official Central Statistics Office.

Mike Taft, Unite’s researcher and an economist, told the Guardian: “The one in four who suffer deprivation as well as the tens of thousands of others having to put up with six years of austerity will regard Bono’s remarks with total derision, it is the only word anyone could use to describe what he has said.

“Where else can you begin with his defence of this low corporation tax regime? As well as the one-in-four, it is worth pointing out that wages in Ireland are well below the European average and for six years we have seen public services smashed apart due to austerity cuts, and here we have Bono talking about low corporation tax bringing us prosperity.”

Bono’s claims about low corporation tax delivering economic progress were made against the backdrop of an EU investigation into separate company tax avoidance strategies in the Irish Republic. Brussels is demanding an end to schemes such as the so-called “double Irish” in which corporations such as Apple use two Irish companies to lower their tax rate in Ireland.

There is no suggestion that Bono was defending the tax-avoidance schemes, which are separate from the 12.5% corporation tax.

But trade unions have argued the low corporation tax has also deprived the Irish state of billions of euros in revenue.

Taft said that the “double Irish” tax loophole was “probably doomed” due to the international criticism of Ireland.

The trade unionist and economist said Bono would be doing the country a better service if he argued that Ireland should adopt the model of other equally small, export-driven countries such as Finland, Denmark and Belgium. In the interview Bono describes himself as a “natural social democrat”.

Taft added: “These countries that, like Ireland, are defined by the IMF as ‘small, open economies’ have legitimate and appropriate relationships with multinational companies. What we have allowed to happen in Ireland is to turn our country into a vital link in the global tax avoidance chain.”

U2 have come under fire themselves for their own personal tax schemes. In 2006 the band moved the company that runs their global music empire to a finance house in the Netherlands so that it would pay less tax than if it had remained in Ireland. Their manager, Paul McGuinness, defended the move, stating that 95% of U2’s income was earned outside the Republic.

In the same U2 interview, guitarist the Edge said of protesters who had demonstrated about the issue during their 2011 Glastonbury set: “Was it totally fair? Probably not. The perception is a gross distortion. We do pay a lot of tax. But I was them I probably would have done the same, so it goes with the territory.”