Dr. Micheál Collins:

I am very happy to do that. SARP is a particularly interesting tax relief. It is quite expensive and targeted very much at a very small group of individuals. I was quite struck when I sat down and crunched the numbers on it to see that the average recipient is on an income of €313,000.

There is an argument that these are good jobs, which we should bring in because they deliver long-term benefits for the State but that argument could be made in various different ways for almost every job in the State. One can construct an argument around that. One has to stand back and ask whether this is a good use of resources, given the resources that are available, or whether they should be put somewhere else. A report carried out by Indecon examined the issue. There was a brief cost-benefit analysis at the tail end of that report, although it did not include any sensitivity testing and only limited information on the dead weight and displacement assumptions that were made. It echoes a point Dr. Roantree made earlier, which was that if one asks people who are in receipt of a tax break whether it is a good idea and whether it should be continued, one will generally get "Yes" as an answer. We need to take a slightly broader view and consider whether, overall, it is a good use of resources for society. When one looks at it, it is quite stark that it is not and that the benefits involved are quite small. I suspect there are some benefits but they are quite small and we could make better use of those resources.