Mr. John McCarthy:

We will probably pay approximately €2.7 billion into the EU budget for this year. This is not affected that much by the multinationals. We would have a big difficulty if it was done on the basis of GDP because the latter includes all the massive profits of the multinationals but GNI takes them out because the profits do not accrue to Irish people, so Irish living standards are better assessed on a GNP or GNI basis. Yes, there is an issue with GDP overinflating living standards. In terms of the EU contribution, however, it works its way out. We have a new measure - GNI* - which removes even more of the multinational activity. The Deputy mentioned the onshoring of IP, which would be excluded from GNI*. We do not have the 2017 figure yet but in 2016, the ballpark figure for GDP was €275 billion whereas the figure for GNI* was just south of €190 billion. There is quite a substantial difference between the two.