Mr. Niall Cody:

For a company to be registered here, it has to register with the Companies Registration Office, CRO. Most companies that register here immediately register for corporation tax. They are trading here and they have converted from being sole traders into limited companies or whatever. In 2016, an additional 16,390 companies were registered on the corporation tax system. The last few years have seen numbers in the region of 16,000, 15,000, or 13,000. Meanwhile, 20,951 companies registered with the CRO in 2016. We examine companies which are registered with the CRO but which have not registered with the Revenue Commissioners to see if they should do so. That starts with a declaration form. All sorts of shelf companies that do not trade here at all are set up. They are set up because somebody thinks that they might trade. The foreign companies that have set up in Ireland are primarily not brass-plate operations. They provide substantial employment. I looked at the figures for last year. The Revenue Commissioners examines employments, as opposed to employees. A person could have a number of employments. He or she may be dealt with by different companies in a group. There are 490,000 employments linked to the multinational sector.