Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Is the Minister's concern around the retention of regional or local information or is it a question of the place of production as against the location of research and development? Is she saying that this Bill relates to research and development and not to the place of production? It is important we have a sense of where research and development is taking place regionally. It may be that the Minister does not have the capacity to put the place of production into the legislation but there is a concern in research and development circles in Ireland over the current practice of encouraging people to sell their companies prematurely by giving them a 10% capital gains rate. Can the Minister find a way to capture geographical information in some way in this legislation? Can we make that available to Enterprise Ireland, which might be tracking where production is taking place? Does the research and development, that we are subsidising by halving corporate taxes in the area, lead on to production? In two, three or four years' time, when we evaluate the knowledge development box, we are going to want to see if it led to something. It may not be for this Bill but another piece of legislation. Enterprise Ireland, however, needs to have the information to allow it to carry out its evaluations.