Mr. Brian Brennan:

It would also have an impact on the valuations. It does influence behaviour. For example, if a vendor is disposing of an asset or a business and they are looking at a 33% rate of tax, they are going to try to get an inflationary increase on the consideration on the disposal of that asset. In terms of evidence, a number of years ago the rate of CGT in Ireland was 40%, and it was reduced to 20%. The effect of that was that it had a behavioural impact, in the sense that the country's CGT receipts actually increased almost tenfold. There was a substantial increase in CGT receipts as a result of the reduction of the rate. We talk about consideration in sales. With inflation at around 10%, those gains are actually inflationary rather than economic. If these assets were bought many years ago, there has been no increase in the actual base cost to deal with inflation, for example.