Professor Patrick Honohan:

It depends crucially on what instruments are subject to the tax. As this has progressed it has tended to be watered down. At present in the Irish system, some of the transactions, on which there has been focus, are taxed at a higher rate than that. If it was watered down sufficiently, we could end up losing tax revenue from it. I am probably not sufficiently up to speed with the discussions within that group of countries as to what they intend to tax. However, there are certain activities - probably not those of the biggest employers in the IFSC - which would possibly be adversely affected. One could imagine that some firms' business model would vanish and they would go, but it would not be big. There would be more detail in that paper, but I am sorry not to be up to speed exactly on it.