Ms Cora O'Brien:

The basic principal of a capital gains tax is that one will collect more capital gains the more activity there is in the economy. We would very much welcome an economic analysis of this but the people we spoke to, business and our members, were unanimously of the view that there is activity that is not happening in this economy because of high capital gains tax rates. To be ten points above the OECD median is making Ireland an outlier; we are the fourth highest in the OECD. We would say, "Do not look at the rate of capital gains tax in isolation, look at what we are trying to do". We are trying to diversify the funding sources for small businesses, many of which cannot get bank finance. Many of them need angel investment, equity investment and help in that area.