Mr. John McCarthy:

I can give the Deputy my general views but I do not have the figures to hand. It comes down to the Commission's methodology, which is agreed by member states and which finds that the labour market clears at about 8% or 9%. My own view is that the labour market in Ireland probably clears at about 5% or 6%. In other words, full employment is in that region. I believe that harmonised methodology understates the true potential of the Irish economy and the gap between the two figures might be two or three percentage points. At the moment we are probably at or very close to full potential. In other words, there would be no output and on that basis the headline balance would be very close to the actual balance. In 2016 we are looking at a deficit of 0.9% of GDP, as is shown in the SES, and for next year we are looking at a headline deficit of 0.4%. If one takes the view that we are close to potential the structural deficit would go from 0.9% to 0.4% and we would be very close to our MTO next year.