Mr. John McCarthy:

I will be very brief. I only have one sentence on the four or five questions. I believe my colleagues in the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government can help with the last one. On the fiscal rules, fines are automatic if they are breached, we have put that in legislation. No country has yet been fined, I will grant the Deputy that, but we do have automatic correction mechanisms whereby the Commission and the Council of the European Union can instruct a state to take corrective action if it deviates from the adjustment path. We have put that in our own Constitution via the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2012.

I mentioned the relatively low yield. I stress the word "relatively", obviously €250 million odd is a lot of money, but the total tax take this year will be approximately €50 billion. That is the sort of "relative" I wanted to put on that. The 45% ratio the Deputy raised is policy so I will not comment, but I will say it is not a legal obligation. The Minister in his budget speech simply said that given the volatility of our GDP, and we had the 26% in 2015 and the Irish economy is so volatile, that it made sense to build up significant fiscal buffers to be able to address the next shock. We all know shocks will happen, it is just a matter of where they emanate from and the magnitude of the shock. In terms of compliance and connections my colleague, Ms Graham, will respond.