Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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No, I am not making that point. I am making the comparison between the net assets, whether of Irish-domiciled funds or otherwise, which make up about half of all the funds in the State, and the amount of tax they pay. One of Ireland's big attractions for the fund industry, which has gone from assets of about €600 million in 2006 up to about €4.4 billion, is the tax structure. We also have good services for the fund industry. We have bespoke legislation, which the Irish Government are willing to facilitate. We have flexibility on regulation from the Central Bank, which goes to the heart of the issue that we are talking about.

One of my big concerns is the risk that this causes. The trajectory here is going in one direction, and going in one direction fast. I am not sure how much more ambitious the State can be on the size of administered funds that we are likely to have. However, there is obviously a risk with that. I believe in the idea of a national competent authority regulating the industry, but I also know how that has failed abysmally in the past. When the media talked about the "wild west", they were not talking about Anglo Irish Bank or AIB, but about insurance companies in the Irish Financial Services Centre, IFSC. Nobody really pays much attention to that part, and that is where the label came from. Does this proposal not make the industry which Mr. Lardner represents less competitive?