Mr. Seamus Coffey:

I will take the first question on the sustainability of corporation tax. One issue is that it jumped up so quickly. We are not predicting that it will fall but if it can rise so quickly, there clearly is the potential for it to fall again. We have assessed the volatility and predictions and forecasting of various tax heads. Corporation tax is the one that shows one of the highest levels of volatility and has the greatest difficulty in forecasting it. The revenue is coming in, and coming in quite strongly. If one considers what happened last year with supplementary spending, if that is being done on the basis of corporation tax receipts that are volatile, one can put in those changes in spending but can one be sure the funds will be there in the future? There is nothing there to say there is a major downturn in corporation tax receipts likely but caution should be practised when looking at it, particularly as to how concentrated it has been as was mentioned. Ireland does not appear to be unique. It is something we have looked at. Other countries seem to have a reasonably similar concentration of corporation tax but they do not seem to have the volatility in the receipts. It seems to be an issue we should take greater care of. It is highly volatile and the sustainability issue is because this year we are seeing it rise, yet next year it could fall. Should we be basing spending, as one would expect to do on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis, on something that is as volatile as that?