Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

We did. To come back to what we were discussing earlier, there is a simple way of handling approved retirement funds or ARFs. The Minister could table an amendment to increase the 5% tax to 6%. The Minister said that the rate that went to 5% in the last budget is taxed at a person's marginal rate and is effectively the equivalent of about 2.5% at the top rate of tax after the universal service charge. Therefore, if the Minister wants to get approximately another 0.6% in line with the income levy, he could increase the existing levy on the approved retirement funds by 1%. Does the Minister have the yield figures from the tax on these funds over the last couple of years? They came in at 1%, then went to 3% and later to 5%.

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