Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

Basically. Every month, when the Exchequer returns come out, if there is a situation where the corporation tax receipts are ahead of what had been assumed, that money would be put in some notional account where it would not be touched. When people talked about the Exchequer balance, it would be the Exchequer balance once the excess money had been paid into the prudence account. Therefore, if one suddenly had an extra €1 billion in corporation tax, it would not make the Exchequer balance €1 billion better because it would have been siphoned off into this prudence account and, at the end of the year, one would have to do something with it, like put it into the rainy day fund.