Mr. Derek Moran:

The interesting thing is that on the day of the decision, the Commission had mentioned that this money should probably be lodged to an escrow. The Commission had said it. As it was pending we had been doing much thinking about it. One of the risks of not doing so was giving the Exchequer a large exposure to having to meet any shortfall. If one puts it on deposit at a negative interest rate of whatever it might be, there is an annual fall in the value of it. I must get this right. If, ironically, we were to win and the money was going back to Apple, the State could be in for several hundred million in terms of moneys lost to negative interest rate charges. If that had been on deposit with the Central Bank, it would have seriously distorted its balance sheet. We would have got 80% of that in additional profit back from the Central Bank, so there is a gap. One can see in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report the third country adjustments. There was a loss. Negative interest rates would be a contributing factor to that. The benefit of the escrow is that at the end of it, let us say three years hence, if one loses €40 million per year to negative interest rates the State does not have to make up the difference.