Mr. John Hogan:

There is a great deal of attention on the international situation. It is fair to say that, when we consider our position vis-à-visother countries, we are approaching the forthcoming difficulties from a position of relative strength. We have strong public finances as we move into a period of increased economic uncertainty. Some of that is down to what we are seeing in the corporation tax receipts. According to Revenue's data, corporation tax performed above expectations in 2020 and 2021. It represented a sizeable element of the Exchequer's tax take for those years - 22.6% in 2021 and 20.7% in 2022 - and was second only to income tax and VAT. Much of the increase we have seen in this regard is attributable to the higher tax receipts from the large multinational sector, as the Deputy alluded.

Looking at the picture internationally, there is a great deal of attention on what is happening in the tech sector in terms of announcements in recent weeks about job losses in particular and what we could describe as a realignment. Mr. John McCarthy might wish to comment on this, but our analysis is that some of the announcements in the tech sector almost point to a realignment of expectations. As we saw through the course of the pandemic when we all experienced working from home, there was a large and increased reliance on technology to allow us to do the important jobs we had to do. The Department had to top up its own IT infrastructure to facilitate all of that. To a certain extent, projections within the tech sector of a continuation of that is beginning to come up against a more uncertain economic future.