Mr. Charlie McCreevy:

Successive Finance Ministers, pre my period and during my period, have introduced changes into the taxation code to ensure that everyone is trying to .. that everyone is paying an adequate level of tax. As I referred to a few minutes ago about the change I made in the 1998 Finance Bill regarding the capping of the reliefs that could be carried across, that was the total amount you could bring across which was, I think, the most significant change I made. Subsequently over the years, my successor made changes regarding some of these reliefs as well and put in an overall threshold for them. All of that is a job that you review every couple of years to see, "Well, are we getting ... is there too much avoidance in this particular area and should we even it up?" That's the job of what a Finance Minister does previewing a Finance Bill. The Revenue Commissioners come along and say, "Well the figures show this and this relief has been overused or this relief has been abused or this particular section of a Finance Bill was never intended to give this particular type of relief." And we take anti-avoidance measures all of the time. That's what I did and my successor did as well.