Mr. John McCarthy:

We have had the issue of a small number of companies having a disproportionate impact on GDP for some time. Earlier one of the members mentioned the impact of the pharmaceuticals, patent cliff and so forth. One can see that this arises from time to time. Ireland is so small that a handful of multinational companies can have a disproportionate impact on GDP. Mr. Enright may have the figure to hand, but something like 50 companies account for about two thirds of gross value added in the economy.