Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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138. To ask the Minister for Finance the way in which the change to the TBE rules have added to GDP and GNP in 2016 and his Department's estimate of the likely influence they will have in 2017 on both GNP and GDP; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15965/17]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The new EU VAT rules relating to the supply of telecommunications, broadcasting and electronic (TBE) services were introduced by Council Directive 2008/8/EC and Council Implementing Regulation (EU) No 1042/2013 and took effect from 1 January 2015. Under the new regulation, the applicable VAT rules on the supply of TBE services in intra-EU transactions are those in the Member State where the consumer resides.

The publication of National Accounts data, including GDP and GNP, is the responsibility of the Central Statistics Office (CSO). Assessing the impact of the new rules on GDP is complex given the wide range of services covered by the regulation, the need to account for the impact on Irish suppliers as well as Irish consumers and the fact that there are different VAT regimes across the EU. However, it is likely that the ultimate impact on GDP would be negligible as a number of these factors would net off. The initial estimates of 2016 GDP and GNP data were published by the CSO in the quarterly national accounts for the fourth quarter of 2016 earlier this month.  These showed GDP growth of 5.2 per cent and GNP growth of 9.0 per cent.  The final figure for 2016 will be published with the National Income and Expenditure data for 2016 due in June. 

The most recent assessment of the economic outlook was published as part of the Economic and Fiscal Outlook in Budget 2017. At that time, my department was forecasting real GDP growth of 3.5 per cent this year and real GNP growth of 3.3 per cent. A revised set of macroeconomic forecasts will be published as part of the Stability Programme Update in April.