Mr. Seamus Coffey:

The choice of using whatever resources are available is largely a policy choice. It is not something the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council would get hugely into. Some of the concerns we have raised about the issues the Deputy has addressed are whether they are reflective of increased resources. Are some of these developments from multinationals and the impact they have on our national accounts, our gross domestic product and our gross national product reflective of our ability to provide public services or to service debt? Our view and the view of many would be that they are not. Even within that, one identifies certain choices that are made relating to corporation tax policy, such as the research and development tax credit, the use of which has increased significantly over the last years. As long as the overall use of resources is maintained within the broad fiscal parameters as we see them, it is not necessarily IFAC's view that these should not be undertaken but we identify things that have grown substantially in recent years.