Mr. John McCarthy:

We had projected a figure of 3.5% for this year. This figure was endorsed by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, as now required under European legislation. At the time, we described it in the budget as the baseline scenario. We did, however, say that the confidence bands around the central scenario were wide and that risks were skewed to the downside. The risks were, as we all know, the world economy, the European economy, Brexit, etc. At the time, we did not know President-elect Trump-----