Mr. John Hogan:

In the context of assisting the Minister in framing his budget, in light of all of our experience with transaction-based taxes in recent history, we are clearly mindful of the dangers posed by them. We are, however, assured by the analysis of our colleagues in Revenue and, looking at what we are seeing in the industry at the moment, there is a feeling in the Department that this is sustainable and that the Minister has a strong basis to include it in his budgetary arithmetic.