Dr. Micheál Collins:

I am happy to come in on that question given that I would have mentioned the term once or twice. It is not an unfair question and one can look at it from the perspective of asking people who are low earners or high earners and it is always very hard to define those thresholds. The high earner restriction, which is the structure that the State has in place to ensure that taxpayers pay a minimum rate of income tax, kicks in from an income of €125,000 a year. Our legislation and the structures that the Revenue Commissioners implement define high earners as incomes of €125,000 and above. When one puts that against the figures that the Revenue Commissioners show for all of the earners in the State, about 6% of these earners are above €125,000. It is, therefore, quite a small group of people.