Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy and will deal with the various points he has raised. I do not have available to me from the Revenue Commissioners an estimate of the amount of tax revenue that is leaking out of our country. One has not been shared with me over the past year. The only point on which I would caution is there might be different things at play here. The loss of tax revenue due to illegal purchase of goods and bringing goods illegally into our jurisdiction is tax that is foregone. I perceive tax lost due to Internet and online shopping as being very different, in that we do accrue some tax back in that regard and it is a legitimate legal activity.

On the Deputy's second question about capacity constraints and how we are trying to plan for it, one reason we are implementing Ireland 2040 is to try to have a better plan as to how we build homes and where. In particular, the plan announced by the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, earlier in the week of putting together a fund to encourage higher density development in our five largest cities is an important way of ensuring more homes are being made available as we either keep the jobs we have or create more jobs.

Our approach to dealing with demographics is that the expenditure plans we publish contain how much we set aside to deal with the impact of demographics in any given year. That is then broken down by Department. We already know what additional expenditure we will be making available, for example, to the Department of Health, to cope with the effect of demographics next year. In the latter part of the final chapter of the summer economic statement, for example, the Deputy will find a considerable amount of text on the impact of demographics in social protection and the State pension. We also lay out there some of the figures we believe we will need to deliver across the coming period to deal with the effect of aging on our society.