Mr. Seamus Coffey:

That is a wide range of matters. I will take corporation tax. What we have done in trying to determine the excess is to take a range of approaches, not just a single one. The year 2014 is clearly before the most recent surge happened. We are not saying that everything that happened since then could be considered an excess but it is one of a range of approaches that we use. In overall terms, comparing the initial 10% forecast for 2019, we are saying that the range of the possible excess is from €2 billion to €6 billion. It could be that a very large amount of it is structural, as the Deputy indicated. We are simply highlighting, first, the nature of the increase in recent years, which has been very rapid, and second, that using different measures gives different indications as to what might be considered an excess performance. We are not hanging our hat on one individual approach but putting a range of them out there.

On the performance of taxes, income tax is up 8% this year. Something we have tried to highlight is the performance of PRSI this year. It has grown by almost 10%. Returning to our earlier point on an overconcentration on Exchequer figures, PRSI is a very significant revenue source that is generally ignored. Its growth of 10% is quite significant. It is about €400 million ahead of forecast. It is very deep within the fiscal monitor. We can try to figure it out but it highlights the broader question that there should be more focus on things outside of the Exchequer. Corporation tax for this year looks like it will outperform forecast by 16% compared with what was set out in the budget last year, which was an estimate for this year of just under €10 billion. It looks like it will exceed that and be close to €11 billion. One reason the year-on-year performance might not seem very strong is that in 2018 we were informed that there were significant one-off payments that would not be repeated in 2019. While the headline year-on-year growth rate might look modest enough at 5%, if it is done on the underlying basis and the one-off payment from last year that was not repeated is stripped out, then the growth in 2019 looks stronger again and is probably ahead of income tax and PRSI.

On concentration and income tax being 38% of tax compared with 2006, the Deputy is not comparing like with like. In 2006, significant revenues would have been collected by the health levy that was then in place. It was a tax that did not go into the Exchequer and therefore is ignored by and large. It was collected elsewhere in the general Government sector. At the start of 2010, I think, we introduced the universal social charge, which combined the health levy, which existed in 2006, and the income levy that was introduced in 2009. They are now paid into the Exchequer account. I do not have the figures to hand but a more complete comparison between 2006 and the present day would show that the gap or concentration in income tax is not quite as changed as the figures the Deputy gave suggest. It does highlight some of the changes that have arisen as the income tax system has changed. The universal social charge, which is collected as income tax, was introduced and some of the other changes introduced during the crisis have not been reversed. Our focus on corporation tax is justified, and the growth, when those one-offs are stripped out, is still quite significant.