Funny that they recognize in the response that they are primarily an US-based company, with US labour educated in the country, but instead want to pay Irish taxes. Or maybe they do get 30% of their worldwide profits from Ireland, who knows...
I don’t think it’s a problem when Apple decides not to move money made overseas back to the US. That's their decision and there is nothing shady about it either way. I can't think of any moral objections.
Purposefully moving money somewhere in order to avoid taxes, however, could be if not a legal at least a moral problem.
I don't think this is a problem either, unless they lobby themselves a holiday under which they can move it back on the cheap. Which is something they have been trying to do for a while now (to be fair, Google, Cisco and others have been pushing for this with them, so it isn't just Apple).
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-29/google-joins-apple-...
Ireland is the EMEIA headquarters for Apple and yes they do get more then 30% of their worldwide profits from Europe.