Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Private investors were a requirement of Brussels and included banks and various other people. The system is not structured in such a way that they share in the profit. We will check the exact figure for the Deputy. The €2.5 billion, and anything added to it in the next couple of years, will be Exchequer money. When that matures, the Minister for Finance will need to look at whether or not to take the money into the Exchequer. Our European friends, however, will probably insist that it is taken off our debt.

Alternatively, it might be left within a NAMA structure whereby NAMA could spend on extra housing or social infrastructure. There is a way of modelling whereby we might be able to use that. NAMA is off balance sheet, as the Deputy knows. There is a gap up to 2020 in which it might be possible to do clever financial engineering so that we could dedicate some of the NAMA profits to some investment purpose which, for a while anyway, would remain off balance sheet. I have no plan in that direction. I am just pointing out that there are options that should be considered by whoever is around in a couple of years' time.

The Deputy referred to corporation tax. Going back to 2013 and 2014, the Deputy will find that it was short of €4 billion. In last year's figures and this year's estimate it is about €7.5 billion. Taking €7.5 billion in revenue on €90 billion pre-tax profits, if the Deputy's figure for that is correct, it comes in somewhere about 8.6% or 8.7% rather than the 6% he referenced. Revenue has said that the extra yield on corporation tax is not due to any changes in law but is coming from the extra profitability of the corporate sector.