Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

I will let Professor McMahon come in on the Brexit questions in a moment, if he would like to do so. I will answer the other two points. The Exchequer returns confirmed much of what we see in the economy. It was striking that VAT and excise taxes were down by approximately 20%. That is a good reflection of what is happening in the economy. With regard to other tax heads such as income tax, when one is doing a comparison year on year, which is how we tend to do these things, one sees a lot of growth between May of last year and February of this year. It does not quite show up in the numbers, but we expect those tax heads to decrease very steeply.

With regard to the projection of a deficit of €23 billion included in the SPU, it was a good figure at the time but, as I noted in my opening comments, given that there has been an extension of some of the programmes and that stimulus measures are likely, it is almost certainly an underestimate. To be fair, spending has been a little bit lower than expected in some areas but I do not believe that will make a great deal of net difference. The Deputy is right that the deficit figure is likely to be higher than the SPU figure, which was partly allowed for.

In terms of the risk around corporation tax, I would not say that I am more worried than I was when we last spoke six months ago. Corporation tax can be affected by two things. One is the state of the domestic economy, which will push down a lot on corporation tax as many companies are facing very hard times. It will be interesting to see what happens to the multinational sector. As ever, that is very volatile and hard to predict, but it may be that the multinational sector remains relatively strong. That would be a good thing at a time other Government revenues are suffering. However, in the long run, it is not a sustainable solution for financing the public finances. It will be important, despite all the competing pressures in the years ahead, that the over-reliance on corporation tax is addressed and does not get any worse over the coming years. I will hand over to Professor McMahon.