Mr. John Hogan:

All of those considerations would come into play. The additional data from Revenue on the extent of deferral options will be important to the group's analysis. On the separate question of stamp duty, the issue of the Minister's consideration regarding the potential outcomes of changes to stamp duty was assessed. There was interaction between the Department and Revenue. This takes place at all levels, particularly when options are being prepared for the Minister's consideration as part of the budgetary process.

I think the Revenue official who came before the committee said that his account was as far as he could recall. However, we are fairly clear that we had quite a bit of interaction with Revenue throughout the summer, on stamp duty and on other measures that could have been taken as part of budget 2018. That is part of the natural discourse that we have with Revenue as we build our information resource to help the Minister make budgetary decisions.

The pre-budget ready reckoner produced by Revenue was available from mid-July onwards. That gave an indicative number of €94 million raised per 1% increase. Often when we look at policy options to put to the Minister the background to a number such as that will be part of our dialogue with Revenue. More generally, we discuss whether there is some scope for increasing or reducing a figure because of the potential impact of that on yield and the available fiscal space.

Throughout our discussions of the Finance Bill, there was quite a lot of interaction between the Department and our Revenue colleagues. We discussed the change to commercial stamp duty and the associated legislative provisions that were needed to give effect in the budget to that decision by the Minister.