Mr. Ian Talbot:

On new markets, we have already said that the Single Market is a huge opportunity. It is next door. Since Brexit, 35 ships a week are leaving Ireland for continental Europe, whereas it was five or seven before Brexit. The opportunities are now easier to avail of and access. Of course, life is not all about exports but there are also opportunities for people to buy product from the Single Market. Brexit was a bit of an education for all of us on the finer points of the Single Market. We realised just how easy it is, leaving aside language difficulties, to trade with the 26 EU countries. It is also easy to trade with the UK. We should not forget that it is a market that keeps growing. When I wrote that submission yesterday, I had in mind that we are constantly trying to take in at short notice what is being said in the budget and the accompanying papers and asking whether anyone heard anything about the National Training Fund. We are trying to determine the core message.

My core message was about the 41% ETF tax, which the Minister said would be reduced to 38% and on which he said a review would be done. A topic of conversation for several years has been that it was €140 billion, €150 billion or €160 billion, and now we are going to do a review of it. To come back to the time issue, as I said in response to Senator Nelson Murray, we do not have time any more to throw stuff into a review if it is just a matter of deferring making decisions on it. I am not sure how much money the ETF tax raises. I might be completely wrong but I have heard it is approximately €70 million in a year. In the scheme of our tax returns at present, particularly corporation tax, that is nothing.

Could we not throw out this model and put something out there to say that creating new retail products to support Irish businesses is now fully supported and will be supported by the tax system? I am not sure what it would look like - perhaps a tax of 20%. At present, because there is no market for a product that pays a tax of 41%, nobody is building products to serve the market, and they will not build it for 38% either. Rather than keep it for the sake of a €70 million tax return, we should throw it out altogether, put in something new and let the market build new products. I have no doubt whatsoever that the tax return on whatever came back from that new market would vastly outstrip the €70 million. We have never had a better time. That is what was driving my thought process when I wrote it. It has never been a better time to move away from incrementalism. Incremental change in something like VAT or income tax involves big numbers. This is not a big number. Let us take a risk.