Mr. Pádraig Dalton:

We have to look at how employment, in particular, is measured. If a person is in work for one hour in the reference week, that person is termed as being in employment. This applies officially not only in Ireland but everywhere according to International Labour Office standards. Therefore, one of the things that we always have to examine is the quality of the employment. We need to look at the breakdown between full-time work, part-time work, hours worked, the sectors where growth in employment is occurring, whether the jobs are high-value jobs or lower-income jobs. Another consideration is the tax-take associated with those types of jobs. I do not have those figures before me now. Anyway, when we are considering tax and employment data it is not a simple one-to-one correlation. We can go back to our colleagues on the labour market side and ask for some insight into that question.

I would always be careful. We always say that in the case of short-term series we have to be careful about interpreting one instance. We always like to examine a series over a given period. We would prefer to examine a 12-month period to see the correlation. Generally speaking, the correlation is rather strong between the two over the longer term. It can break down on an individual quarterly basis sometimes. However, generally, over the long term we will see a consistency in the movement between the two.