Dr. Dermot Coates:

It was January to May this year. We are comparing that with the same period last year. It is pretty much at a standstill. The volume of incorporations versus liquidations was not markedly different for the two periods. We had committed to an in-depth, granular project for producing a detailed time series on incorporations and liquidations by type and sector. That work is coming towards a conclusion very quickly. I anticipate that we will be coming forward with more detailed information at some point in October. It will be a long time series that will allow us to better understand what is happening.

Sometimes when we think about the volume of liquidations in a given period, whether it is one month or 12 months, and we look back to prior years, we forget the fact there are far more businesses in the country now than there were ten or 20 years ago. Even if the absolute number of liquidations is increasing as a proportion of the stock of firms, that may not be the case. This is the type of question we are trying to answer with that data exercise.