Dr. Kieran McQuinn:

It has been an ongoing issue over the past number of years. We produce forecasts of tax revenues as part of the commentary. Every year, like the people in the Department of Finance and elsewhere, we try to be as conservative as possible in terms of our forecasts because we are always wary of the issue of the sustainability of the taxation receipts. Each year, it just seems to outperform our expectations and there are very significant upward revisions in terms of the amount of corporation tax and I think this year is no different. In fact, the receipts this year may be even higher than those of nearly every other previous year. We would share the view that a certain proportion of the increase that is observed in corporation tax should be devoted to one-off or capital expenditure purposes. If you start using those increases in corporation tax receipts to fund current expenditure, the danger is if those receipts suddenly dry up, you can be left with a sizeable hole in the budget. If the money goes into capital expenditure, once-off expenditure or even a rainy day fund, as has been proposed, that is a more prudent use of the surge we are observing in the receipts. As to how we diversify beyond the ten firms, it is a very difficult thing to do. We have a certain number of firms in the jurisdiction that make a sizeable contribution as far as corporation taxation receipts are concerned.