Mr. Derek Moran:

Mr. McCarthy has already offered to prepare a note for the committee on that subject because much of it is technical. It goes back to this concept in the rules. I will say this carefully, the fiscal rules as they stand are in general probably a good thing as a framework. We have a set of rules that apply to the totality of the EU. The economies of the area are very different in terms of scale, size, dynamics, recent history and so on. To that extent, there are occasions where they can be entirely counterintuitive in terms of how they apply at any point in time. I absolutely recognise that. In the end, we have come from a situation - and I think we began some of this discussion earlier - where in 2007 we had a debt rate of 25% and we reached 120% within a couple of years, which exposed the country to huge problems. We have to try to get the balance right to prevent that happening again. In the end of the day, the rules are an integral part of the overall fiscal pact. There was a referendum on this whole structure a number of years ago and it is the framework in which we operate.