Maureen O'Sullivan (Dublin Central, Independent)
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Question 160: To ask the Minister for Finance the amount of money the State has injected into the banks since September 2008 and the legislative measures that have been enacted or are proposed which curtail the banks offsetting their entire cumulative losses post-September against future profits; and if the State will be doubly disadvantaged by the banks being allowed to indefinitely offset these losses against future profits for many years to come, in the process paying no corporation tax [15587/11]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The following table sets out the amount of capital injected by the State into the Irish banking system to date. The total amount is €46.3 billion.

On the issue of losses, Ireland follows the international norm, in that losses incurred in the course of a business are taken into account in arriving at the appropriate amount of tax that a company should bear. Under existing legislation, companies are entitled to carry forward unrelieved trading losses for offset against trading profits in future accounting periods until the losses are fully relieved. However, special arrangements apply in the case of financial institutions, in the context of dealing with impaired loan assets. In this regard, provisions were included in the National Asset Management Agency Act 2009 to limit the amount of relief that can be claimed by participating institutions for losses carried forward from earlier years.

This measure, which is provided for in section 396C of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997, has the effect of restricting the amount of a participating institution's group trading income which can be reduced by losses brought forward from earlier periods to 50 per cent of such income. The measure will ensure that, when the institutions return to profitability, a minimum of 50% of their trading income will remain chargeable to tax in an accounting period notwithstanding claims for relief for losses carried forward into that period.