Mr. Paul Dillon:

I will respond on two matters, the first of which concerns tax reliefs. We are not advocating a blanket tax relief for all areas in the sector. We are talking about specifically targeted and managed tax reliefs introduced to stimulate key areas of the economy. The view is that once those specifically targeted and managed reliefs have done their job, they should be withdrawn. It is hoped that by bringing funds into the SME sector, for instance, it will allow for growth in this sector, which would lead to an increase in the yield of corporation tax, employment taxes and VAT. We completely accept that some of the tax reliefs used in the past, while they may have been targeted correctly at the very beginning, were not managed and were let run too long.

The second point I want to make concerns offshore funds. This is a very technical area. It is not specifically about offshore bank accounts. This is where people have invested in collective investment-type funds and there is reporting on the tax turn. It is not simply about opening a foreign bank account in an effort to avoid tax. I refer to specific investment funds with a quite or very complex level of taxation depending on the type. If someone is ill informed or makes a mistake, he suffers from the imposition of a very penal rate of tax. It is not to do with tax avoidance. These are marketed funds that people can invest in.