Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Clearly, the success that we have had in recent years in attracting significant financial leasing business to this country is well known. We are a big global player in this sector. One of the key points in the action plan published by the Government some time ago was to develop this sector further. It is not so much in terms of the employment opportunities although it is indirectly because if we can obtain funds into the country that has an enormous potential in terms of pension funds in particular. The clarity that is being sought through this provision is something to give what is called "first mover advantage" in circumstances where the US already has this in place and other EU countries do not. Because we have managed to develop this over a pretty significant period of years, money can go in and out very quickly. I said previously on many occasions that this is a highly privatised, highly deleveraged economy. One of the ways in which we as a country will come back to growth is by attracting investment into this country and attracting investment in on pensions in circumstances where difficulty in this respect arose in recent years. This measure provides the potential to do that in terms of giving such certainty. It is also questionable whether it would apply anyway. We are putting it in for certainty and for avoidance of doubt in regard to this aspect of funding.

The IDA is strong on this as well. We are trying to attract funds into the State across Government, as we have in recent years, but we see this as a potential area across the jobs area. The idea that this was done with some ulterior motive or some negative connotation is fanciful. There is a huge opportunity here because of the capacity of funds to attract those funds to this country. The aviation leasing sector has been significant. We have no reason to believe that by doing this there is in any way a negative to it. On the contrary, we think this is significantly positive in terms of assurance that those funds which come into this country and are invested in the aviation leasing area can remain in this country.