Ms Josephine Feehily:

The total debt was €2 billion and value of tax under appeal was one third of this amount, €669 million at 31 March 2012. When that figure is released from the appeals process, it goes back into the amount for the relevant year. This is the new and better analysis that we need to be doing. We have started the process of analysing the debt by age, but when one looks at the old debt, we need to overlay it on when it was put on record. In many instances, the oldest debt was subject to an appeal stop until a more recent time. When the appeals process is exhausted and the figure is released, the debt is allocated to the year in which the charge was raised. Therefore, the old debt can be misleading from that point of view.