Mr. Brian Keegan:

I thank Deputy Sean Fleming for his questions. He made three points and I will address them in turn. First, on the recommendations we are making, it would be irresponsible of us to make any recommendations that would be too costly to the Exchequer. We believe, however, that certain targeted tax reliefs can yield benefits. For example, we are proposing changes to the employment and investment incentive scheme. There will be an income tax relief for people investing. As against that, it will give small to medium-sized enterprises a better chance to generate employment. We know there is a difficulty for businesses in attracting working capital and we think there would be a balance. Similarly, the research and development tax credits are already being granted to companies and what we would like is to see those credits filtering down to employees to generate sustainable employment and help them out. We are also talking about improving the regime for those coming in to work in the country. Our suggestion there is that 20% or 25% of something is better than 41% of nothing. The suggestions we are making involve tax relief but they are designed to ensure that the overall tax take would hopefully increase.

The second point Deputy Sean Fleming made was in connection with the appeals process. Is that correct?