I read Ireland did not want the money Apple was ordered to pay. Wonder why?
Because being forced to collect that money from Apple could have deleterious effects on its economy over the long term.
The rule of law is an important concept. As much as anything, it's what separates third-world nations from developed ones. Parties - to include businesses - need to know that, for the most part, the rules are set, that they won't be enforced arbitrarily or capriciously, and that they won't be changed with retroactive effect. A reliable rule of law is foundational; it allows so much of that which is beneficial about society to be built upon it.
(The Republic of) Ireland wants businesses, as job creators and economic stimulators, to be able to trust what it tells them about its laws and how they will be enforced - to include its tax laws. Ireland has tried to make those laws attractive to business so as to, over the long term, benefit its economy. In turn, businesses make decisions and take actions in reliance on those laws and assurances from Ireland as to how those laws might apply to their particular situations. Ireland then benefits from the decisions and actions of those businesses. If businesses, along with other parties, can no longer trust that what Ireland tells them will be abided by, that's problematic. It discourages them from operating in Ireland. The concept of reliance (on counter-party commitments) is a big part of what makes economies, and societies in general, work.
Ireland has already made changes to its tax rules. But that's okay, as those changes apply prospectively. Parties can often live with the possibility that changes with prospective effect might be made. However, the European Commission is now trying to force Ireland to effectively say to Apple:
Hey, you know those things we told you decades ago about how our tax laws work and would work in your situation? Well, we were wrong. We were wrong about how our tax laws work or, in the alternative, if we were right about how our tax laws work then we aren't allowed to have such policies. And now you have to pay the price for us being wrong - not going forward, but retroactively.
It's understandable that Ireland doesn't want to have to, effectively, say that to Apple, even if it means getting a fairly large tax pay day as a result. In saying that to Apple, it is saying to the rest of the world:
You can't trust what we tell you about how our laws work. And if it's decided later that we were wrong, you might be the one that pays the price for it. That makes Ireland a less attractive place to do business and to build out operations. Ireland has worked to make itself a more attractive place, so it of course doesn't want things which undermine those efforts.
There's also, from Ireland's perspective, an issue of national sovereignty. Ireland is part of the European Union and the Single Market, and along with that comes limits on its autonomy. But this is an area in which it believes it maintains considerable autonomy. It is free, for the most part, to set its own income tax policies. It sees this action by the European Commission as, effectively, telling it that it can't have the income tax policies that it has (or that it had). It doesn't see this as an objection to a special deal it gave Apple, because it doesn't believe it gave Apple a special deal. It believes that its advance opinions (for Apple) were consistent with its general tax policies - that other similarly situated parties would be able to do similar things (or that they would have been able to before it changed its tax policies). So, understandably, Ireland is resisting the European Commission trying to tell it what its tax policies can be when it believes that it should, and that it does, have the right to set those policies as it chooses.
