Mr. John McCarthy:

No. However, it will publish its winter forecasts at the beginning of next month and I strongly suspect it will include an analysis of what the lower oil price means. The IMF published its interim world economic outlook last Tuesday and it stated that the overall impact of falling oil prices would be to add between 0.4% and 0.7% to overall world output. From an Irish perspective, our rule of thumb is that each €10 per barrel reduction in oil prices increases the growth rate by between 0.1% and 0.2%. It used to be higher, but the dependence on oil is much lower now because we have become a software driven economy rather than heavy manufacturing. That is the rule of thumb we would typically use. The fall we have seen since last summer will have a positive impact, as will the depreciation of the exchange rate. However, as Deputy Doherty mentioned, there have been downward revisions to the euro area and so forth, so they are operating in opposite directions.