Ireland may soon have €13.5bn to play around with in finances after a landmark ruling by the European Court of Justice.

Earlier today it sided with the European Commission in its bid to make Apple pay the money – meaning Ireland could now be required to accept the funds which have been sitting in an escrow account for eight years.

EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager originally ordered Apple to pay Ireland €13.1bn in 2016 – finding that the country had given companies owned by the US tech giant illegal tax aid.

Both Ireland and Apple have been fighting against the order ever since.

Newstalk's Simon Tierney told Moncrieff he's come up with a few suggestions of how to spend it.

"What I've tried to do is to break down the figures of how much it actually costs to send an astronaut to the Moon," he said.

"The last time this happened was over 50 years ago so there's a huge amount of inflation as you can imagine.

"Between 1960 and 1973 NASA spent $28bn developing the rockets, spacecraft and the ground systems needed for the Apollo programme.

"That comes to $260bn in today's money but that's for the entire Apollo programme - all I want to do is send one Irish man into space".

Simon said we'd need to think about a launch site first.

"The trouble is we don't have a place to launch it, we don't have a Kennedy Space Centre," he said.

"Would it be worth renting the Kennedy Space Centre perhaps for a day or so?"

Simon suggested we could also buy a retired space shuttle which is currently on sale for $28.8m.

Hosting the 2036 Olympics

Simon said bringing the Olympics to Dublin is another contender.

"At the moment the 2036 Olympic hosting process is still underway," he said.

"There are currently four cities that are vying for the title: Istanbul, Nusantara in Indonesia, Santiago in Chile and Ahmedabad in India," he said.

"Dublin, Ireland can also be part of that.

"We can do our sailing in Dún Laoghaire, our triathlon in the Liffey, we can do our rowing down at Islandbridge.

"We have so many golf courses for the golf event, we can do beach volleyball on Dollymount Strand."

Simon suggested these plans likely aren't ambitious enough.

"Once the clouds of ambition cleared I realised what we should really be aiming for is hosing the Winter Olympics," he said.

"The last Winter Olympics was in 2022 and it was hosted just outside Beijing in China - there was zero real snow used in that.

"You're talking about $60m [which] is what the Chinese spent on snow machines at the Winter Olympics in 2022.

"Winter Olympics are generally much cheaper than a Summer Olympics.

"Use the money that we've left over from hosting a cheaper Olympics to build a massive crossrail through the country".

Bridge connecting Ireland and Britain

A feasibility study in 2021 under then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson looked at the possibility of a bridge linking these two islands.

"The closest distance between the British mainland and Northern Ireland is 19 kilometres," Simon said.

"The feasibility study said... it would cost £335bn if it was a bridge and £209bn if it was a tunnel - that's well over the €13bn that we have to spend.

"But the longest over-water bridge in the world in China [which] is 164 kilometres over the sea - ours is 19 kilometres.

"Surely we can do it for cheaper?"

Simon said one potential sticking point could be Beaufort's Dyke - a 300-metre deep crevasse between Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Overseas spending

Simon said Ireland could also use the money to grow and secure Ireland's diplomatic footprint.

"We're building all these Ireland Houses in capitals all over the world where they bring cultural Irish centres and diplomatic headquarters together," he said.

"The problem is some of the places around the world are actually rental properties.

"The latest information I could find about this is that the building that we current rent in New Delhi for our embassy and our ambassador costs almost €300,000 in rent per year.

"So my idea is to stop paying rent and instead we buy a gaff in India".

Simon said he's already found a house on sale from Mukesh Ambani - the richest man in Asia - which is priced at around $2bn.

One texter suggested Ireland could just "buy €13bn worth of Apple shares".

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