Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not believe so. The Deputy referred to the risk of financial services companies migrating from Dublin to London. That is a risk, but what is being examined in terms of a financial transaction tax is stamp duty on certain transactions. We already charge stamp duty of 1% on transactions of shares, a measure which is analogous to what is being discussed. However, once it is introduced, it may migrate to other areas. We will watch it carefully, but it is not 1 million miles from what we apply. There is a similar tax in London of 0.5%. The original proposal from France was stamp duty starting at a figure of 0.1%, a good deal lower than what we apply. Thus far there is nothing dramatic about it, but they may apply it to instruments other than share transactions, in which we would be interested because it might affect the financial services industry here.

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