Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for coming. It has been very interesting so far. One of the very interesting things that was mentioned a few times is the responsibility the committee has to look at how the budget overspends, etc. One of the things I found particularly frustrating at this committee in the previous term is Ministers would come in the week before the budget talking about figures that were totally different from those presented on budget day. That is what we do historically but it can be very frustrating in terms of the work we are supposed to do.

My first question relates to corporation tax receipts. It was mentioned these are likely to be higher than projected. The Minister for Finance was before the finance committee recently and I asked him about the projections for corporation tax receipts versus what actually happened in the end over the past five years. For four of those previous five years the out-turn exceeded projections by approximately €7 billion. Is the Department's annual forecasting of corporation tax receipts too conservative? If we are looking at what are we dealing with in the budget, the committee should know.