Dr. Micheál Collins:

I thank the Deputy for her questions. I mentioned earlier that Ireland sits mid-table in terms of other countries. There is, however, a real challenge in the way in which we define and count tax expenditures across countries. There is no coherent and consistent system, although the OECD has tried, and continues to try, to achieve that. We are, therefore, challenged in terms of a coherent or concrete answer to that question. The most useful comparison is to view the revenue forgone cost that we have available, of which we have more and more these days, as a proportion of the overall tax take. By and large, organisations like the Department of Finance and the Revenue Commissioners would be a little uncomfortable with individuals like me and, perhaps, members of the committee, calculating the entirety of the cost and forming the view that overall they amount to X. I note the Parliamentary Budget Office did that in its report as well. To be honest, I do not see anything wrong with that. The argument against it is that if we were to abolish all these tax breaks overnight all of that money would not come in, which is a fair and correct argument, but nonetheless it gives us an insight into the scale of the tax write-offs that are in place currently in the system. I would encourage the Deputy and others to feel free to put those numbers together because it gives us a scale of the cost.