Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am sure the Chairman will keep an eye on it as well. Mr. Moran, Ms Nolan and their team are very welcome. The first thing to recognise is that they have presented us with a good news story. There have been excellent returns in virtually all categories, including corporation tax, which has been phenomenal. We should look at it initially from that point of view. A figure of 140,000 jobs is incredible over a few years. Unemployment is down from 15.3% to 8.9%. Gross Government debt is down from 120% to 97%. The general Government deficit is down from 11.5% in 2009 to 2.1% in 2015. These are phenomenal results in a very short space of time and the Department should in the first instance be complimented on them. All the indications are that there will be strong progress in a positive direction in the future.

In respect of corporation tax, which has been teased out in considerable detail and on which I will not dwell, I would speculate in terms of getting a final solution. I hope the Department does come back to us with a more detailed statement as to where all of that money has come from after all the econometric models are completed and the IDA has produced its final report. Mr. McCarthy spoke about exchange rates and the depreciation of the euro versus the dollar from 1.29 to 1.05 or thereabouts. That is depreciation of almost 25%. Considering that the vast majority of the multinational companies are US companies that are trading in dollars or using currency of that nature, this alone would affect a considerable amount of it.

It seems that the IDA has done a fantastic job throughout the recession and there has been an unexpected increase in multinational companies' attraction to the country. It appears that even while the economy was going down domestically, through the global Irish network and the IDA, those critical areas of foreign direct investment not only remained intact, there was a substantial increase in those years and this is now coming to fruition. Perhaps the second pillar of that was that for the first time ever, small and medium-sized Irish industries were trading abroad because there was no domestic consumer market here. They have now established bases so there is a strong trading return coming from the international exports stage. Now that the domestic market has picked up substantially, a double whammy is coming forward when the opposite was true in the past. This could account for a certain amount of the profits that are now being realised.

Despite all of that, the phenomenal increase of 2.2% or 2.3% over 2014 from €4.184 billion to €6.361 billion requires further teasing out and clarification. I would love to see the details of why and how Mr. Niall Cody, the chairman of the Revenue Commissioners, was able to say that this was sustainable going forward and that it was not a windfall but effectively cyclical and sustainable. Could the witnesses respond? I do not want to go into any further detail but could they expand on whether this scenario could exist and also expand on what they have already said?