Mr. John McCarthy:

There are case managers in the Revenue Commissioners who deal directly with the large cases and the large firms on a daily basis. We use that interaction - the information they supply to the case managers - to inform our forecast at the beginning of the year. However, it is important to stress that no multinational is compelled to provide the information. Multinationals are probably conservative in terms of the information they will supply but we can only take what we are given. It is a purely voluntary exercise. We use an econometric model but we also supplement it with judgement based on that interaction. The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council has assessed our approach to forecasting the various tax heads and has concluded that using that judgement actually improves the accuracy of the forecasting.