Mr. Joe O'Connor:

I wish to pick up on a point Deputy Boyd Barrett made. I have read the joint letter by the various professional bodies that Mr. Cody mentioned. That obviously happened in the autumn to winter time between the budget and the Finance Bill. It is clear that it was a very powerful argument from a very powerful lobby group to say that for a marginal saving to the State this is something that would greatly affect the businesses practices of all these professions and would impact on business. That was probably a scary thing for the State at the time. In the meantime our focus has very clearly been on protecting the jobs and incomes of the workers we represent. This was well down our priority list but was obviously high enough on the priority list of professional bodies to make those representations.