Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy for his question. Overall, across the year so far, corporation tax receipts are on profile. We anticipated when we published the stability programme update, SPU, in April that corporate tax receipts would grow by approximately 7% over 2022 levels. In the year to the end of August, we are pretty much on profile, with 7% growth, notwithstanding the reduction relative to last year in the corporation tax receipts in the month of August, which underlines the volatility of that tax head, which the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, and I and the Government have repeatedly spoken about.

Of course, corporate tax receipts are heavily dependent on the financial performance of multinationals across the FDI sector and various industries, and their performance is directly linked to their ability to manufacture and export to the global economy. It is certainly the case that we have seen a weakening of the external environment. Many of Ireland's main trading partners will experience little if any growth in the current year, and that inevitably will have an impact. We have seen a particular weakness in exports in the pharma sector. That is related to the very high level of performance last year, much of which was Covid-related. We are also seeing weakness in the area of semiconductor exports. Contract manufacturing is a very relevant issue here. It feeds into our GDP figures, which ultimately feed into our corporate tax figures.

The question the Deputy raised as to what we do with receipts that we all acknowledge are inherently volatile in nature is, therefore, important. It is a twin-track approach for us. We believe we need to spend more on infrastructure and public capital investment. That is why the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, and I have made the decision to allocate an extra €2.25 billion over the next three years to the NDP. We also have to provide for the future, however, and Deputy Durkan will have heard me and other colleagues in government speak about the need to make provision for the future. I anticipate that on budget day we will make a further policy statement on that issue.