Mr. John McCarthy:

Indeed, but it was endorsed by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council at the time and there were many changes in the external environment. We had not included in our forecast the easing in the monetary policy stance, quantitative easing, QE, which took effect from January. We had included an assumption that the euro-dollar exchange rate would be approximately $1.30, and I think euro-sterling was approximately £0.78. QE and the massive reduction in oil prices which fell by 50% between the time we did our forecast and the beginning of this year had a major impact on where the economy was going. The exchange rate is particularly important because it has a big impact on nominal gross domestic product, GDP. This year we will have nominal output growth of approximately 11% or 11.5%. Approximately half of that is due to the deflator and that in turn is due to exchange rate movements. We have to take assumptions that are supplied to all euro area member states as part of the so-called two-pack because we have to produce the common budgetary timeline and assumptions and so forth. We had to use these exogenous variables. There was a massive change in some of those variables because of something that was unforeseen in September-October 2014, the stance on monetary policy. With that, we revised our April forecast for economic growth. In September of this year we revised it upwards substantially again because the data flow has surprised everybody. The outturn has been exceptionally strong in real and nominal terms in quarters one and two. The high frequency data in quarter three are very strong.