Professor Philip Lane:

Yes. This is something on which many people have the same message. Later this year when I write my annual pre-budget letter to the Minister I will address corporation tax. It is not really a question of projection because that conveys some degree of certainty that is just totally impossible to have, but so long as there is a risk that some corporation tax revenue may not be relied upon in the future then the answer is to allocate some of it either to reducing the national debt or to building up a rainy day fund. The answer is really the same. We are in a world of uncertainty. We know what happened with the construction-related tax revenues 15 years ago, but now in relation to corporate tax revenue some probability has to be given to the fact that not all of this tax revenue is necessarily sustainable. There are different strategies on this but when one has global corporations contributing to our corporation tax base we have to take this global perspective on it.