Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh míle maith agaibh, Dr. Roantree and Dr. Kakoulidou. I will open the floor to members now. I am first on the list of contributors, so I will begin.

I will address Dr. Roantree and Dr. Kakoulidou first. I will start with the news of the day in respect of the announcement that Irish growth is forecast to be 11% for the year, despite the unemployment rate remaining at 16%. We know that Ireland had the fastest-growing economy in 2020. It was one of the few growing economies in the world. That was with the Covid-19-adjusted unemployment rate of approximately 25% and the longest lockdown in Europe. We know that changes to international corporation tax arrangements could negatively impact our corporation tax baseline to the tune of €2 billion to €3 billion annually. I note, from the witnesses' opening statement, that there is a potential over-reliance on volatile and highly concentrated corporation tax receipts.

I also note that details of a scenario analysis are provided in table A.1 of the Quarterly Economic Commentary. This analysis details growth rates for Irish exports in 2021, and makes a comparison with a non-pandemic baseline. I found that really interesting. In the absence of a pandemic, export growth would be 6.9%, whereas it is currently forecast to be 13.3%. Do the witnesses consider that very strong growth rate as indicating that we are in a corporation tax bubble? I am interested in the over-reliance and the volatility in that.

In its report, the ESRI says that this is linked to the pharmaceutical and IT sectors. Can Dr. Roantree say how many companies are driving this growth? I would be very interested to know what kind of relationship that has with the real economy. I would love to hear his views in that regard.