Mr. Seamus Coffey:

On the issue of the shareholders, the simple answer is that for the multinational operating in Ireland, all the shareholders are foreign. The multinationals have subsidiaries here so their shareholders would be the parent companies. When the profits are made in Ireland, they would all be classed as essentially accruing to a foreign resident so all the profits would be accounted in the balance of payments as leaving. The parent company collects the money. People who buy shares in the parent company may collect a dividend. That would be counted on the way in so we could see dividend flows coming in but we simply would not know what companies they are coming from. An Irish person might have shares in a company. We cannot disentangle whether they have shares in a company that has an operation in Ireland. We see all the money flowing out and dividends coming in but we cannot tell whether they are getting the dividends from the parent companies that have subsidiaries in Ireland. In terms of the profits that are earned by the subsidiaries, it is all counted as going out because the parent company owns them.