Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I accept the principle of losses forward in the corporation tax code. It is an important aspect of our corporation tax system and it should be preserved. There are exceptional circumstances here and that is why the issue must be examined. The reason I framed the amendment as I did is to tease out what the consequences would be of making a change. It is a timing issue but it is a timing issue over a long horizon of more than 20 years in certain cases. When the Minister made his statement on the tracker mortgage issue he said that one of the possible policy measures available to him was amending tax law in a targeted way. Is he clarifying this morning that he was not referring to possible changes to the treatment of deferred tax assets in respect of the banks and the carrying forward of losses and that he was only referring to the bank levy when he made that reference? Second, what commitment is the Minister giving with regard to the consequences for the capital position of the banks? Can a paper on that be forwarded to this committee so we can examine what the consequences would be of the impact on deferred tax assets and then the impact on the capital position and a possible call on the Exchequer for additional capital? I would like to see that analysis.