EU research, innovation and science commissioner Maire Geoghegan-Quinn has said that Ireland's tax policy is an internal matter for the State, and "that's not going to change".
Speaking in Galway yesterday, Ms Geoghegan-Quinn also said she believed a focus on research and innovation would move Ireland and Europe out of its current economic difficulties.
Ms Geoghegan-Quinn was also critical of the "negativity" she had experienced in Ireland during the past week, and said she had met many "ordinary people" who told her they were "sick of hearing about the doom and gloom".
The ECB/IMF "mission" must "be allowed to do its work" and it would report "in time", she said.
"The ECB and IMF are going to be working with the Government, and working with all of the other authorities on the banking side in particular. They'll also be looking at the four-year programme that the government is putting forward, and all of that is happening," she said.
Asked about the criticism by other EU member states of Ireland's low rate of corporation tax, Ms Geoghegan-Quinn said: "If one looks at what European commissioner for economic and financial Affairs Olli Rehn said when he was here, what Chancellor Merkel has said since, tax matters are a matter internally for the country.
"The plan will say what needs to be done, what level we need to reduce to, and it will up to the authorities, the government and the political system here to put forward the policies that will reach that. Tax policy is always the preserve of a national member state and that's not going to change," she said.
"While all of that is going on, you have an innovation policy building to exit out of the crisis, and develop jobs and growth. I think it is very important that people appreciate what is being done in the real economy," she said.
The EU would need an additional one million researchers by 2020 if it was to
meet its target of investing three per cent of gross domestic product in research and innovation, she said. Ireland's small and medium enterprises (SMEs) had a success rate of 23 per cent in drawing down EU funding for this, which was higher than the EU average of 19.1 per cent, she said.
"There is tremendous support from all around Europe and you saw over the weekend the chancellor [German chancellor Angela Merkel], the British prime minister, the French president coming out one after the other, supporting Ireland, fully confident that the four year plan and the budget that Ireland will put forward will be the exit strategy and that they are moving in the right direction," she said.
Ms Geoghegan-Quinn was in Galway to open the city's annual science and technology festival, which was initiated 13 years ago by former science and technology minster and Galway East TD Noel Treacy.
Also speaking at the event, NUI Galway president James J Browne said there were "two economies" - the banking and fiscal sector, and the business/SME sector which was "working very well" and increasing exports.
Medtronic vice-president Gerard P Kilcommins, head of a company employing 2,000 people in Galway, said that Ireland needed to "calm down".
