Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On fossil fuel subsidies, it is significant that such a low percentage of fossil fuel subsidies tend to be direct taxes. It is mostly indirect taxes. How is tax expenditure factored into those subsidies? We have spent some time in this committee looking at the oversight on tax expenditures, and we have come to the conclusion that the oversight is lacking. There is about €7 billion in tax expenditures of which we do not necessarily do full scale reviews annually. I would be interested in the views of both groups but I will go to the ESRI first.