Ms Josephine Feehily:

Not in the last half year because clearly there was increased economic activity behind it. As long as we are not too far out of line with the United Kingdom in frontier and cross-border purchases, the higher rate is not as problematic as it might seem. Most EU jurisdictions, in search of money in the past five years, have increased their VAT rates and we are not far from the average. The highest rate allowed under EU rules is 25% and more and more countries have been moving into the high 20s, between 20% and 25%. The critical risk for us is linked with cross-border shopping. Because of the sterling rate it has not presented a difficulty in the last couple of years. It did a few years ago when the United Kingdom reduced its VAT rate, which had an impact.