There are Irish customers buying Apple products. Some of that money goes into the salaries of Irish Apple employees, which pay their taxes in Ireland. Some of that money goes into other expenses in Ireland. What's left goes to the USA where Apple pays taxes on the part of them that turns to be a profit. The idea is that part of that money (the tax) should not go to the USA but stay in Ireland. In that way the money of Irish customers would stay in Ireland, which is probably good for Ireland but it's a matter of opinions.
There is also a 15% corporate minimum tax of big corporations, in effect since the beginning of this year [1] I think that there are many ways to keep circumventing even this attempt at keeping EU money inside the EU, but we will see.
Is this the case, though? How much profit is generated by Irish Apple customers compared to the giant amount of tax paid in the country due to Apple being there?
Not so giant. You can check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_EU_tax_dispute which is updated with the latest ruling. The dispute was about taxes from 2004 to 2014. I wonder how much they'll owe to Ireland for the next ten years.
> Apple only paid an effective corporate tax rate that declined from 1% in 2003 to 0.005% in 2014.
There is also a 15% corporate minimum tax of big corporations, in effect since the beginning of this year [1] I think that there are many ways to keep circumventing even this attempt at keeping EU money inside the EU, but we will see.
[1] https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/taxation/business-taxa...