Mr. Ajai Chopra:

Okay, a couple of things on this. I think, and I've said this before, Ireland did not have the luxury of not pursuing fiscal consolidation. Fiscal consolidation had to be undertaken. The structural fiscal deficit had exploded as a result of the crisis and, having lost market access, Ireland did need to demonstrate to markets that it did have a medium-term fiscal plan to address these deep-seated new problems that had emerged in its public finances. So that had to be done. One can debate how quickly that had to be done and I've given you my view on that front but, you know, let's not, let's not avoid the issue that it had to be done. It was also well recognised that the fiscal consolidation would be a drag on growth. We may have underestimated that drag on growth. The IMF has come out with, you know, lots of analysis on what we call the right ... the fiscal multipliers. I think, you know, the other issue that I've mentioned in the context of a monetary union is that, you know, there's the issue of the policy mix. Ireland might be doing a massive fiscal adjustment but it does not have its own individual country monetary policy offset. And let's not forget that, you know, in 2011 the ECB was actually raising interest rates, so you not only had a tighter fiscal policy but you also had a tighter, you know, a monetary policy that was too tight, given the conditions of the economy and again, so the drag on growth was significant.