Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)

I respectfully disagree with Dr. Regan. I considered his analysis and saw the reports on it. I said earlier to the Deputy, when I made the case again, that in my experience the vast majority of IP that is located here is here due to people, history and the substance located here. Regarding the risks that Dr. Regan is flagging, I accept some of the points he has made. I have been making the same point for a number of years, saying this is why we need to run budget surpluses. The reason we are running a budget surplus of over €8.5 billion, which is a big share of the total amount of tax that we collect in Ireland, is that I have long acknowledged that a decision by a single company could have an effect on the tax revenue that we collect. For many years now, my Department has published an analysis that shows that some of the corporate tax revenue that we collect is dependent on a small number of taxpayers and I have used that as the argument for running budget surpluses. If that risk were to materialise, it would mean that the first way in which we would accept that loss of tax revenue would be through our surplus going down.