Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)

The Indecon report, at that point, recommended that we increase the lifetime limit to €12 million. I think it was recognising that the overall limit in place of €1 million might not be of sufficient scale to incentivise investment in entrepreneurial activity. It believed we should be making a very, very significant increase of it all the way up to €12 million. That is not possible to achieve from a budgetary perspective and instead I am making a more modest increase of €500,000. The overall aim of this is that entrepreneurs might consider that in respect of the gain they are getting, benefit disposal of an asset, they are getting a larger share as a result of the change we are making. It might encourage them to participate in another venture in the future and that might in turn encourage them to grow the value of the venture they are involved in at the moment because the lifetime limit has now been increased. To be frank with the Deputy, it is a relatively modest increase in the value of this threshold in comparison with some of the requests that have been made.