Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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It is too early to predict that. We will see what happens over the summer. VAT is overall in line with profile, but there are different elements to that. I do not want to speculate too much about it. The difficulty in having an early budget is more to do with the income tax returns of the self-employed. They come in during November and if we have to do the budget in October, we will be guesstimating those returns. I will probably have to bring the filing date forward, but I cannot do so until the second October budget, not this one. We will have to announce the bringing forward of the filing date in the budget this coming October. As to whether we can bring forward the filing date and not also bring forward the payment date, I will have to get agreement with Revenue on that.

Generally speaking, we will have a fairly good idea by mid-October where this is going. It would be possible to put some type of adjustor in when we get the December figures, perhaps some tolerance on what we will do with excise or something like that. That would be for one year only until we reschedule the filing. I do not see it as a major problem. It is something we can manage.