Mr. Martin Whelan:

I wish to make one point about capacity and experience in the sector. The most intractable cohort of long-term unemployed people on the live register is males within the age group that would have fallen out of the construction sector. Having seen the industry ramp up and ramp down, I think there is every expectation that if there were a pipeline of certainty in house building, one would see some of them coming back into employment, which obviously has the benefit of savings on social welfare and tax on the other side. There is, therefore, a latent capacity there that could be tapped into if the sector were able to ramp back up.