Mr. Niall Cody:

In reality, the only way to look at the corporation tax receipts is to look at the annual figure because of the rules around when companies pay their first preliminary tax, their second preliminary tax and the balance in charge. The fluctuations that take place on a monthly basis are not an indicator.

We publish details on corporation tax receipts and there is a huge concentration, with the top ten entities paying well over 50% of the total corporation tax take. The receipts are hugely influenced by individual companies. Sometimes the Department of Finance gets criticised for not doing the forecasts right, but we see companies reporting quarterly profits and they are either undershooting or overshooting their own quarterly profit forecasts. It really does fluctuate depending on their profitability. We have no reason to believe that 2024 corporation tax receipts are going to be widely different from what we estimated.