Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Rónán Hession made the point that we do not have that many allowances. That is somewhat debatable. It is certainly the case that the amount of taxable income that can be written off by the allowances that do exist is pretty extraordinary. Mr. Howard seems to be saying, if I understand it correctly, that many of the companies that account for much of the profits and allowances have moved from writing down their taxable income via paying patent royalties to themselves or other subsidiaries of their group, that is, to themselves, to getting allowances on the basis they have intangible assets which benefit from the machinery and capital allowances. Is that correct?