Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)

I can talk about the information I have, but the question was really whether the Minister has an assessment. The committee has not seen the review. The Minister has the benefit of talking to his officials. I do not know why we are carrying out a review if the Minister is pre-empting the outcome of that review. I have not seen the review and I do not have access to the Minister's officials to learn what they think, why they are not targeting the recommendation on small and medium enterprises or what is the most up-to-date information about who will benefit from this €300 million tax package.

We talked earlier about the fact that the Minister did not give a tax break to workers. The Government broke its election promise in that regard. It has made choices. I am not saying this choice is wrong. I have not seen the review. However, I know from the Minister's predecessor that when the increase from 25% to 30% was dealt with at this committee - the Minister was not here because he had a different departmental brief at the time - the cost was €150 million, and the cost for the in-scope companies was €137 million.

That means that 91% of the entire cost of the increase of the R and D tax credit went to companies that have turnover in excess of €750 million. If that is the case, we need to be discussing that and we need to ask if it is appropriate that we are about to vote on a tax break that costs €309 million and it is likely that 91% of that, which is nearly all of it, €270 million, will go to companies that already have turnovers in excess of €750 million. That is a fair question. We then have to make a judgement. That is the latest information we have. The review would provide us with the most up-to-date information. We do not have a review. Is that statistic still relevant? The Minister talked about the departmental breakdown or the Revenue table - I do not have it in front of me - but from memory it gives it in different scales, and it is 50 employees and then the larger companies are 250. My understanding is all companies from 50 employees up are in scope. They are companies that have turnovers of €750 million or more. That was the information that was also provided to us by the Minister's predecessor on the record of the previous finance committee.