Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Apologies, it is €1 billion. I presume Mr. McCarthy's team is involved in the work that gets them in. The convergence margin shrinks it by €1.4 billion, that is, from a potential €2.4 billion down to €1 billion, and it is because we miss our medium-term budgetary objective, MTO. Our MTO is .5% structural deficit while our forecast is 1% structural deficit. That calculation was done before our odd GDP figure. It is my understanding that it was done before the unexpected additional 26%. Presumably the 1%, if one used the revised GDP figure, the €1 billion structural deficit would shrink to maybe .7% or .8%. It is the structural deficit. The denominator is GDP, so if the GDP goes up, the ratio will fall. Does Mr. McCarthy have a sense of how much of the structural deficit is accounted for by overheating? I know the Commission uses a bunch of different metrics. It goes back ten years on employment, it has stated that 8%, 9% or 10% unemployment is about a steady state in Ireland. Many people in Ireland would say that it is not and it should be lower than that and so forth. Does Mr. McCarthy know how much the structural deficit was increased on the basis, or on the assumption from the Commission, that Ireland's economy was overheating, as opposed to if we were just at about capacity? I apologise because I know it is slightly off topic but it is in the same realm.