Mr. Frank Flannery:

Deputy Doherty has hit several nails on the head. Nothing he said has not occurred to me 10,000 times. It is part of having a discussion. It is one those areas about which we are always bad at discussing, facing up to or doing something about in a coherent way. We prefer to leave it and say nothing about it. We should not do that. One way or another, we should try to grapple with it.

We would not have seen ourselves as being the final arbitrator of a scheme. The actual practicalities of a scheme would be a matter for discussions such as this. We are just putting out an idea in principle. One could do a little incentivising in regard to time in return for a significant contribution. Under the Minister for Justice and Equality's scheme, a €500,000 million contribution to a cause is required from these people from Japan, Russia or China. We have set the figures high. People might say they are impractically high but I am not so sure. We will find out.

According to a Revenue figure, there is a realistic population of maybe 450 people to whom this might be of potential interest, rather than that 11,000 which includes people who are working outside Ireland and whom it suits better to keep their main job outside Ireland but who come home all the time.

As they pay their taxes in that other country, they would not necessarily be interested in a scheme such as this.