Mr. Niall Cody:

The rules for Irish-registered non-resident companies changed. There was a system in place where there were Irish-registered companies. The legislation was changed in the Finance Act 1999 to provide that if a company was Irish registered after that year, even where it had no connection to Ireland, it would become tax resident here. The system was closed down because there were reputational risks and suggestions that some of these entities were linked to criminality although not in Ireland. The system was closed down and the companies were dissolved. A significant number of Irish-registered companies did not file with the Companies Registration Office, which carried out a major clean up around the turn of 1999 to 2000. That removed tens of thousands of cases. We are talking here about 139.