Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Thank you, Chairman, and thank you, Mr. McCreevy. Just a couple of brief questions if I may and it's just in relation to your approach to budgets to try and understand the level of analysis done by the Department. Because throughout various points of your evidence today, it has not been clear what degree of analysis had been done prior to a budget proposal and what degree of analysis had been done after it is implemented. In your first budget, the budget for 1998, you proposed having the capital gains tax from 40% to 20%. I'm not interested in the actual proposal itself or its impact but was this proposal out of the blue for your officials or did it come from them?