Dr. Seán Healy:

I agree on the asset-based assessment, as long as it is understood as developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum in creating the capacity to maximise what people can produce, not that it is going to give them a small amount of money, which is the view of some.

I will omit the housing list because we could get into an unnecessary argument about it.

On the issue of indicators, as listed they are too narrow. A few years ago Amartya Sen and Joe Stiglitz, two Nobel laureates, were brought together by the noted radical President Sarkozy of France to produce a study - it is a masterpiece - of what needed to be measured. They identified four items not listed here, including an environmental measurement, the issue of sustainability in the environment which is critical, as is the issue of financial sustainability. Why is that so? The answer is because the first thing that is dropped when the situation gets really bad is the social dimension. The banks are protected, while services for people are cut. We need financial sustainability indicators. The social indicators, specifically well-being, are critically important. Much work has been done in this area, some of it by us. It has been published and we can make it available to the committee. Therefore, we need environmental sustainability, financial sustainability and well-being indicators. That was my basic argument. If we are to see Economic and Monetary Union progress and genuinely include, not just rhetorically, the social dimension, the indicators have to be across the five areas of macroeconomic stability, just taxation, social protection, governance and sustainability, and locked together. There must be no possibility of one being dropped in favour of another.