Mr. Charlie McCreevy:

Well, I stated in my opening statement, and I gave some ideas as to what the purpose of tax incentives are. It's not primarily to give a tax break to individuals, but to stimulate investment in the area, which is lacking such investment, and I referred to it quite considerably during my opening statement. Now much of the commentary in recent years, and I note that during the inquiry, the little I've looked at, that the Senator seems to concentrate totally on the tax foregone and very little credit is given for the economic activity created. There were tens and tens and tens of thousands of jobs created in the construction and other ancillary jobs. There were hundreds and billions collected in PAYE-PRSI, etc., etc. Now, there seems to be just an over-concentration in all of those years as to, "What is the tax foregone?" And also, a, kind of, belief, well it's tax foregone, but it really isn't tax foregone because if the incentive wasn't there-----