Mr. John McCarthy:

The corporation tax numbers are very volatile. We work with the Revenue Commissioners to try to get a handle on it. However, when we have various company-specific issues, it is difficult to get into a granular level of detail. We have to remember that in Ireland, a small number of multinationals account for a large portion of gross value added and profitability. If one firm or a small group of firms are recording strong activity and increases in profitability for sector-specific reasons, we cannot model that from an econometric perspective.