Mr. Derek Moran:

The ... what the European Commission does is that it has a single method that applies horizontally to everybody, you know, big economy, small economies; it doesn't matter which. And the model works perfectly well for a large economy. So that cyclical growth goes up and down according to cycle but the trend growth or the ... you know, is still a fairly stable number over time. When you do that for Ireland, it just doesn't work, it bounces around the place. We endeavoured ... we have pointed out, I mean, on numerous occasions, to them that this doesn't work and its results give you bizarre outcomes. And, for example, some work done by the economics division looked at in retrospect applying those rules to some of the more trenchant, deep cutting budgets of recent years and it comes up with a result that the 2011 budget was expansionary. In other words, it didn't really raise billions in taxes and cuts ... it was expansionary in those terms. And we've been engaged on ... and it's got better. Two things: the Commission are far more willing to engage now and we have made some headway in terms of getting them to adjust some other assumptions within the model and we ... but we've got more to do. And it's not clear that it'll, ultimately, work. But what happens now is that they have two. They have the cyclical measure and they have the expenditure benchmark, and it's not quite an either-or, but one can deal with the country specific issues in a ... you know, in a way that it wasn't a tool available ten years ago.