Statistics Office ("CSO") reported that Irish GDP was 162% of Irish GNI* (i.e. BEPS tools had artificially inflated Ireland's economic statistics by 62%). Irish public indebtedness changes dramatically depending on whether debt-to-GDP, debt-to-GNI* or debt-per-capita is used; the debt-per-capita metric removes all distortion from Irish BEPS tools and implies a level of Irish public-sector indebtedness that is only surpassed by Japan. (†) The Central Statistics Office (Ireland) revised 2015 GDP higher in 2017, increasing Ireland's 2015 GDP growth rate from 26.3% to 34.4%. (‡) Eurostat show that GNI* is also still distorted by certain BEPS tools, and specifically contract manufacturing, which is a significant activity in Ireland. IP–based BEPS tools Double Irish The earliest recorded versions of the Double Irish BEPS tool are by Apple in the late 1980s; and the EU discovered Irish Revenue rulings on the Double Irish for Apple in 1991. Almost every major U.S. technology and life sciences firm has been associated with the Double Irish. Feargal O'Rourke, PwC tax partner in the IFSC (and son of Minister Mary O'Rourke, cousin of the 2008–2011 Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan Jnr) is regarded as its "grand architect". In 2018, tax academics showed the Double Irish shielded $106 billion of mainly U.S. annual corporate profits from both Irish and U.S. taxation in 2015. As the BEPS tool with which U.S. multinationals built up untaxed offshore reserves of circa US$1 trillion from 2004 to 2017, the Double Irish is the largest tax avoidance tool in history. In 2016, when the EU levied a €13 billion fine on Apple, the largest tax fine in history, it covered the period 2004–14, during which Apple paid an Irish ETR of <1% on €110.8 billion in Irish profits. Despite the loss of taxes to the U.S. exchequer, it was the EU Commission that forced Ireland to close the Double Irish from January 2015; with closure to existing users by 2020. Single Malt In an October 2013 interview, PwC tax partner Feargal O'Rourke ("architect" of the Double Irish, see above), said that: "the days of the Double Irish tax scheme are numbered". In October 2014, as the EU forced the Irish State to close the Double Irish BEPS tool, the influential U.S. National Tax Journal published an article by Jeffrey L Rubinger and Summer Lepree, showing that Irish based subsidiaries of U.S. corporations could replace the Double Irish arrangement with a new structure (now