Cliff Taylor

And headcount is where they're looking.

And while over the last few years, while profits were booming and everything was going the right direction, they might have hired a bit loosely, if you like, and built up various roles.

They're now looking in particular, for example, at support roles to see where money can be saved.

And yeah, that is a...

that is an issue.

It is something that is very evident if you look at the Irish job figures.

So overall, they've been strong.

But there is that area of the tech sector where employment has eased off.

It's been a big growth contributor over the last few years.

And I suppose we'd hope that that's going to continue to be the case and this is kind of a readjustment.

But it is difficult and I guess from the point of view of the businesses themselves too, it's, you know, tricky enough in PR terms, you know, you're

you're highly profitable and you're laying off people so that you can be even more profitable.

It's not exactly an easy message to sell, but that's the way of the world with the multinationals.

Yeah, who knows?

I suppose the first thing to say is it's kind of evidence of the strength of the economy heading into this year before...

all the trouble hit.

So I think looking back at the start of the year, the Department of Finance and most other forecasters saying, look, things were a bit stronger than we anticipated.

Tax revenues are a bit higher.

That said, the extent of the increase in the forecast surplus for this year is really striking.

So the original forecast, as you said, was just over 5 billion.