Mr. Donal McNally:

Well, in 1996 and 1997 when we were talking ... in fact, it was with Ann Nolan, who was with you just this morning ... we were talking about these reliefs and what could be done to ... to attenuate them, or what effect they had. We did persuade revenue to do a survey of the top 400 earners, trying to find out which reliefs were being used or not.

And, you know, the conclusion was that these were favouring those with the money to invest and with the taxable income to offset it against and as a result ... and those reviews are published each year, but there was a change made in 1998 Finance Act which limited the amount that could be set off by passive investors against other income. So, you know, it was known that these reliefs benefited high earners, yes.