Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This is part of the problem in the assumptions. I wanted to mention it because this is a hugely important conversation. Dr. Adele Bergin and Dr. Seamus McGuinness have done many papers, but they made a key point in their recent one. They argued that necessary planning and preparation goes well beyond the use of frameworks and requires the use of macroeconomics and micro-simulation tools to model the impacts of various productivity-enhancing policy changes over a number of time horizons incorporating various tax and welfare scenarios adjusted for expected demographics and including sensitivity estimates that account for potential unknown factors.

Is it not true that until we have those simulations and macroeconomic projects we really cannot tell? The data is obviously a big problem we have talked about in this committee, as well as the integrity of the data because of the limitations on disaggregating that from the UK and the congruence between North and South regarding the data. I am just trying to get to the €20 billion figure being there in isolation without taking any of these other things into account.