Mr. Ian Talbot:

Yes, that was our quote. The VAT change impacts certain sectors and obviously a lot of money went into that. For most businesses, things like the research and development tax credit will not be of any value to them. I refer to ordinary business just getting on with day-to-day life and most of the employment. There was virtually nothing positive or negative in yesterday's budget but the cost of doing business still keeps creeping up. There will be extra wage pressure from the failure to index tax bands and things like that as well.

We also made the point about the failure to free up the €160 billion we have on retail deposits, for example. There is a big opportunity there for investment into businesses and we seem to be reluctant to take a chance. There has never been a better time to take a risk on developing new schemes and seeing how they work.