David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Professor Lane, Mr. Dalton and their colleagues. I would love to say they brought clarity; however, I have more questions now than I had before they came in. I do not think this will be on the 6 p.m. news either.

There is concern about measurements, given what happened in recent times when we had headline figures for leprechaun economics which created real problems. There was a big spike in GDP figures and most people saw that they were not reliable. At school I was not good at maths. As it is not my strong point, I ask Mr. Lane to bear with me. In his written submission he stated, "It has long been recognised that GDP is an inadequate indicator of the level of economic activity for Ireland." Is that peculiar to Ireland? He also stated:

For this reason, GNI has been widely employed as an alternative indicator, since GNI strips out net international factor income flows. However, several factors suggest GNI is no longer a sufficiently reliable indicator.

Given that GDP and GNI are insufficient, we must devise some bespoke measurement.