Mr. Seamus Coffey:

It will go down. I do not know when but it will. Corporation tax is the most volatile of our main taxes and this issue shows the raised level of volatility. Without seeing the individual tax returns of these large companies, it is hard to get a handle on what is driving the increases. We have seen those increases happening in a stepped fashion. There was a greater than 50% increase in corporation tax receipts in 2015. The increases then levelled off for 2016 and 2017 before we saw another large stepped increase in 2018. It is hard, therefore, to identify what happened in 2015 and 2018 to cause those increases. There are a number of factors. We have more information about the 2015 increase because the Revenue has published the aggregate information from the tax returns it received. It seems like the legacy of the crash was washing through accounts, with issues regarding companies returning to profitability and certain losses being exhausted.

There also seemed to have been a timing issue in 2015 for companies identifying this increase. Looking at those company accounts, much of the additional tax revenue was due to profits that arose in 2014. Those taxes were not paid in cash terms, however, until 2015. The stepped increase in 2015 should possibly, therefore, have been spread out over a number of years. That would then point to a more gradual increase. We are not any different from other people analysing corporation tax receipts. If there was a clear answer to be had, it would be made available. Regarding the extent to which Irish corporation tax is exceptional, we can compare it to other EU countries that have also experienced large increases in their corporation tax revenues. The difference is that our increases happened over a much shorter period. The increases tend to be confined to over two years. It is right that the language regarding corporation tax is couched with "could be" and "maybe" because we simply do not know for certain.