Mr. Seamus Coffey:

We have highlighted the risk of the scale of corporation tax receipts which are now coming into the Government. They are at close to unprecedented levels as a proportion of tax revenue and there was a couple of years when they touched that level. At 15% the proportion is much higher than it has been on average. The concentration risk is present but this is not an issue for larger countries, where they get corporation tax from a large number of companies. It may, however, be an issue in other small countries and we may not be unique in the concentration we have. While the top ten contribute a large amount, the figures provided by the Revenue Commissioners show that those top ten paid €2.8 billion of the large increase in 2015, but in 2014 they had only paid €1.4 billion, meaning a large part of the increase in 2015 was from those ten companies. In 2016, however, they paid €2.3 billion and overall corporation tax revenue rose by €0.7 billion so there are clearly a lot of moving parts and there is a lot going on. We do not know who these companies are and they are not the same ten companies every year. The work the Revenue has done, however, allows us to track payments by groups of companies and there is definitely a risk. Corporation tax is our most volatile main tax head with the greatest movement, up and down. It was €4 billion a couple of years ago and now it has jumped to almost €8 billion.