Mr. Derek Moran:

At this stage it is fair to say that there was a large increase in onshore intellectual property, IP, with no counterpart expansion on the far side, which gave us a very big jump in GDP level. It could happen that there is a risk IP could be taken offshore in the opposite direction. It did not accrue any benefit for Ireland on the way in and it is unlikely to cost us anything on the way out, if that was to happen. As Mr. McCarthy has already referred to, the important point on the metrics is that Ireland needs to take great care when using IP in our measure of GDP. Our real level of indebtedness is somewhat higher than the 70% suggested by the GDP.