Mr. Marco Buti:

I think that's correct. When the ... I mean in the evolution of the fiscal surveillance, we have moved from looking only at headline figures, so deficit and debt, to try to understand the underlying. So the automatic stabilisers may, you know, vary with the cycle. They go up ... the deficit goes up and down for very good reasons, for very good reasons. But the issue here is to try to detect what is the underlying situation of the public finances. And I have to say that at the time, the method did not give rise to particular worries because we had, mistakenly, and I think here I acknowledged that very clearly back in February, we were projecting growth staying high for a very long time. So we thought at the time, mistakenly, that the potential growth rate of the economy would be very high and remaining high.

We have realised, afterwards, that there was an element of reversional exuberance, let's call it like that, with ... behind the figures. This clearly had an impact on the assessment of the structural balance at the time. I think we have changed ... we have learned a lesson. I have to say that in particular for Ireland, but more generally for small open economies, it is very difficult to detect what structural balances, structural deficits are. Here, you have in Ireland, you have a ... one of the elements is the labour component of the Irish potential growth, and we know that you have a highly integrated labour market with the UK. So, it's difficult here to assess what is the structural rate of unemployment. You have also tax elasticities which are very, very-----