Mr. John McCarthy:

I have been clear, as have my colleagues in Revenue, that the surge in corporate tax was due to a massive increase in profitability. My colleagues and I mentioned it in our opening statements. After we leave aside capital allowances, profitability is up by approximately €20 billion. If we take a 12.5% effective rate, it works out at €2.5 billion. If we take a 9.8% effective rate, it is close to €2 billion. It went up by €2.3 billion. I have been absolutely clear it is increased profitability. The increase in the corporate tax base, that is, corporate profitability, drove the increase in corporate tax in 2015.

I also stated it appeared to be a one-off level shift in profitability due to various factors. I cannot rule out that we could get a one-off or a repeat of that. This is due to a very small number of companies. The macroeconomic models which we use, and which are good models, work in normal times, but no one can predict when we might have a small number of companies onshoring intellectual property. This is company-specific information. We did not even have it from the Central Statistics Office, through no fault of its own, in its provisional set of accounts. It is only when it went through the more granular detail, which it does once a year in June and July, that this became available. We can never predict this will not happen again. We can never predict it will not be offshored. The 26 could be -26 if the small number of firms were to bring this IP elsewhere. I have outlined the reasons for corporation tax.