Mr. Ronan Hession:

That is ultimately a political call for the Government about where it sits on this issue. From Ireland's point of view, going back to our own hosting of the presidency, the preference in Ireland has always been to separate those two issues. Consolidation is by far the more problematic of the two. In terms of the base, it would make more sense to discuss that in its own right. The actual splitting of the proposals is a positive from our point of view. That is not to say the Government would necessarily buy into the argument for a common base. It will wait to hear the analysis of the impact on the base and what sort of questions that raises for Ireland's competitiveness. I do not want to come across as unduly negative. It is my Department of Finance training to be sceptical about new proposals in general. At a high level, the first of the two stated objectives of this proposal is to tackle tax avoidance. The Government is publicly on board with tackling tax avoidance. The tax avoidance elements in the directive were previously agreed earlier this year and Ireland played a very active part in that. In terms of easing the compliance burden for business, it is something that is worthy as an objective. The Revenue Commissioners rates very highly on that internationally. In terms of ease of doing business and filing returns, it is top of the league in Europe and fifth or sixth in the world. That has always been something Ireland has taken very seriously. As high level objectives, the Government has supported those and continues to support them. It is just a question of whether this is the right way to further those two objectives.