Professor Alan Barrett:

We will do our best. I wish to make a point on inequality. Deputy Boyd Barrett came at it from a demand side analysis, that it is bad for the economy to have many poor people who do not have money to spend. I see it as more of a supply side issue.

In a country where a lot of people are in poverty or in a sense are socially excluded, it means the talent pool represented by those people simply is not available to the economy in general. One has a privileged group of people who by accident of birth are then in a position whereby they can capitalise on that accident of birth and do particularly well. I always perceive inequality and its relationship with the sort of economic issues about which the Deputy is talking as having a more supply-side dimension. One of the frightening things about the current recession is the extent that we have this big build up in people who became unemployed and the worry is that group will now become long-term unemployed. There is both the human loss and an economic loss of their skills and talents. Likewise, to the extent that schools and other places are being affected-----