Professor Philip Lane:

The Deputy has asked the obvious set of questions which many people will ask. I will differentiate those whose job it is to closely track the Irish economy. I refer to people working in the Central Bank, the Department of Finance, the staff of committees such as this and, when the parliamentary budget office is up and running, the people who will work in it. I also include people working for global banks which hold Irish sovereign debt, the IMF, the OECD and so on. They all have a high degree of understanding. Part of the process involved bringing them in. We had people from the OECD, the United Nations, the IMF and EUROSTAT. They were all very interested in keeping up with the committee's work. At the level of the experts or professional economists, those who have to track the Irish economy understand the issues involved. When the IMF mission or representatives of the European Commission come to evaluate the economy, they will pay attention to them.