Mr. Paul Sweetman:

One of the issues about that statistic is that we will never see the impact of it in the sense that we do not know the jobs that have been lost. There will be no announcement of projects that have had to be passed privately by companies. It impacts in two ways. It impacts in respect of jobs gained by other jurisdictions that we would otherwise have gained. Those jobs still go somewhere. Most importantly, it concerns the reputation of Ireland. If a company passes up a project, it is less likely to be looked on favourably again when a project comes up, so certainly the impact relates to jobs and reputation.

It is difficult to put a monetary figure on this. Again, however, one just does not know where the next project will lead.