Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

It does not both ways. It works the only way it can. One cannot double count. One can only count once. The fact is that a greater percentage of consumer spend goes to those areas which have higher prices, but on the basis of fixed incomes, the same amount of money is collected by the Government. Due to the higher oil prices, the reduction in economic growth rates means that the overall Exchequer take is down on those headings, as was pointed out by the finance spokesperson for Fine Gael when the figures came out last week.

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