Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will pick up on some of the things that have already been raised by some colleagues. With regard to Brexit, I will make a note about inwards investment. We have had some very good and positive inward investment stories recently of companies choosing to come in so there are a lot of positive reasons to relocate to Ireland. I will not go into the details of some of the stuff we are losing to Luxembourg but my understanding is that our regulators are looking at things in quite a good way and are ensuring we do not have inward investment that we will regret attracting at a later stage.

What Luxembourg chooses to do is its own business.

I ask a question I have asked previously, and it goes back to another point. A great deal of effort was put into devising our own standard to examine the problem we are having with gross domestic product, GDP. GDP is an accepted internationally measured standard. I refer to having this conversation in a parliament in Norway, South America or whatever. Is there not a risk that we are going to a great deal of effort to create something that will have no international credibility because nobody else will use it? It is possible that it could be slightly damaging to our country because if other countries were applying a similar type standard, we might wonder where they would be coming up. My point is that I do not believe we will be able to change the world use of GDP and, therefore, I question the reason we have gone to such elaborate lengths to create something. The exercise could be done in a technical way. GDP will still be GDP, yet we have gone down this route.

In terms of the investment and Mr. Tutty's answer in that regard and to some of the follow-up questions, does he have a position he would definitively support that capital investment should be funded, even if that is by borrowing? Does he believe the long-term benefits to the State justify doing that on the grounds of the drastic cut in the investment during the recession years, which he outlined clearly, and that the long-term benefit to the State, even if it has a borrowing element to it, would justify a Government going down that route?