Mr. Andrew McDowell:

I do not think there is any single right answer to this. It depends on the level of development of the economy and the level of potential growth in the economy. One would expect to see higher levels of capital investment in catch-up economies than perhaps in economies at the technological frontier. In Ireland's case, with a fast-growing population and a potential output growth rate that is considered to be higher than most other European economies, mainly because of its demographics, one would certainly expect to see more public capital investment than is currently the case. I believe that over the period of the crisis, infrastructure investment has fallen in Ireland from perhaps more than 5% of GDP to somewhere between 1% and 2% of GDP. That is probably now the lowest level of public investment in infrastructure in the EU. This is why we are having these new very intensive and constructive engagements with the Irish Government and its agencies on how we can help to reverse that trend, not just through support for Exchequer capital programmes, but by trying find other mechanisms that reflect the constraints faced by the Irish Government under the EU fiscal rules.