Dr. Alan Barrett:

The corporate tax rate in Northern Ireland is determined by London and the UK corporation tax and it is somewhat unusually high now. It is fair to say that corporation tax is always very complicated because there is the headline rate but if there are lots of exemptions and allowances and everything like that, the effective rate can differ quite substantially. Nevertheless, people in Northern Ireland have for a long time argued for a lower corporation tax and I think there were moves on that a while ago.

To pick up on the second question, the Deputy asked about this notion of an area in transition and the EU funding possibilities. I have to confess that, given that we do not get an awful lot of money from it, I am sort of out of touch with what the rules and regulations are. In the context of Ireland having reached the level of economic development that it has, and in the context of projected budget surpluses of €65 billion, a lot of which is tax that other jurisdictions would see as being – I am not going to say stolen from them or anything like that-----