Mr. Seamus Coffey:

There are two separate deductions at play. One is the trade charges which, by and large, are costs a company incurs such as interest on a loan or a royalty to use a patent or intellectual property. They have grown hugely over the past number of years in line with some of the revenues and costs of some of the multinationals operating here. Capital allowances are predictable as they are based on capital spending. If a company has acquired an asset, it does not just offset the cost in one year but spreads it out over a number of years by means of an allowance based on what it spent. Once the company pays the money, the allowance it can claim is a fixed amount every year. Revenue could possibly provide more up-to-date information on capital allowances but even then, once companies acquire new assets, and a lot of new assets have been acquired in Ireland recently, the figure will change. These allowances are not unique to Ireland but what is unique to Ireland is their scale relative to the size of the economy.

Measures that allow companies to offset the cost of assets, or the cost of technology they are using, are standard throughout the world. It is simply that in Ireland the figures are vast relative to our economy.