Dr. Martina Lawless:

I will take those in order. The Taoiseach did suggest that a reduction in the windfall we have identified in corporate tax rates could be made up by an increase in stamp duties. One reason we regularly warn about reliance on windfall taxes is that we saw large increases in stamp duties in the lead up to the previous crisis. Has the Government become over-reliant on any one tax heading? When we warn on corporate tax we are really talking about the unreliability of any tax head or over-reliance on any individual tax or sector. In the previous context the construction sector was contributing heavily to stamp duties but also to VAT, income tax and so on. Although we had a lot of money coming in from VAT, one particular sector was driving much of Government revenues and when that sector was particularly badly hit it had a big impact on overall Government revenues. We would be quite concerned that moving from reliance on one windfall tax to another windfall tax is not a way to sustainably manage the public finance. We would prefer to see a long-term balanced revenue and expenditure path that would be based on the underlying growth rate of the economy being matched on both the income and the expenditure side.