Mr. John O'Dea:

I will respond to the question on capital gains tax, CGT. We have a blanket capital gains tax which is at a very high rate. One only has to look at the situation across the Border to see how entrepreneurs are achieving a much more attractive capital gains rate. It is not just about the opportunity cost and losing tax revenue from CGT, this could be a selling feature to entrepreneurs. We attract a great many multinationals because of our attractive corporate taxation rate. There is no reason that we could not do the same in terms of attracting entrepreneurs to come to Ireland, if it was a low CGT location. When looking at CGT, we have to delineate between selling a piece of land and a house versus entering a high risk business that one will be in for seven or eight years. Perhaps there is a way we could carve out certain types of technology industries that are very high risk ventures and we should be looking at a very keen capital gains tax rate versus what might be considered a more passive type of investment, such as to salt away money for 20 years or whatever. Members might look at an approach to give technology entrepreneurs an incentive to take a punt.