Mr. Seamus Coffey:

The research and development tax credit is a large tax expenditure. The annual cost now is approaching €1 billion so clearly it is something worthy of consideration again. As Mr. Tutty said, we do not focus on individual measures but something which has a tax cost of €1 billion is worthy of consideration by various bodies. If we look at the broader environment, research and development is a cost. Companies will be looking at the benefit they get from incurring that cost and that will be a reduction in their tax bill. In Ireland, it will reduce the tax bill by 12.5% or whatever cost they incur. In the United States, until recently, it would have reduced their tax bill by 35% of whatever cost they would incur because of the tax rate that applied in the US at that time. That is the environment in which our research and development tax credit was established, given the nature of the companies here and trying to attract activity that might take place in other countries. Given the change in the US tax rates, it might be worthy of analysis to see whether the research and development ax credit itself should be subject to changes. However, given the size of it, it is worthy of scrutiny.

On the proposals made, I agree with Mr. Tutty that that is not within our mandate.

However, there are newly established institutions within the Oireachtas itself that can look at some of these proposals. Perhaps they could move towards costing them and providing the aggregated figures the Deputy has looked for in which the proposals of various parties would be put together. On the Deputy's point on the degree to which Governments listen, I would add that our audience is broader than the Minister, for whom we write the formal report to which he, in turn, writes a response. We engage with the committee to express our views and, equally, the audience is the general public. The reason a fiscal account would be set up is to have that independent analysis and to have an institution that builds up a reputation and offers a view to the public it might not otherwise hear. It might not necessarily just be about changing policy. It can be about getting clear views out there.