Mr. Paul Quinn:

There is much in that. The Deputy asked about data and data availability. As a State we are well behind other jurisdictions, which have typically been working for eight to ten years collecting data, so we are trying to catch up in the process of capturing data and being in a position to answer to the Oireachtas and, from a procurement perspective, to the public as to how the money in the State is spent. That leads to the Deputy's question about how much money is spent outside the State. This relates to my earlier comment about the number of systems we have. There are thousands of public sector bodies that spend money on behalf of the State and, traditionally, we have not had a system in place to gather that information. We now have that system in place and we have been focusing on getting the larger public sector bodies to provide us with data. The good news is we are starting to get that data and it is providing the granularity and visibility required to determine where taxpayers' money is spent. As we get to the later part of the year, it is our intention to publish information from that database so we can be open and transparent about where the public has its money spent.

On the 28% rate mentioned, we can have multiple answers depending on which data set is considered, and that is not acceptable.