Mr. Seamus Coffey:

I think we are. In a sense we are isolated. There is no doubt that Ireland is different from other eurozone countries and our links to them tend to be quite weak. We have, for example, gone through a serious crisis where we moved from a position of inward migration to a position of what appeared to be large outward migration. Most of that migration, however, was not to countries we share a currency with. It was to the Anglosphere countries such as the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Some of those countries are much farther away than the countries with which we share a currency. When a key part of the economic infrastructure of any nation is to have a shared currency with countries, it would suggest close links. The Irish experience suggests we are peripheral and we are operating in a slightly different environment from the central EU countries. This is not necessarily a bad thing but it means we must accept we are operating slightly differently. With regard to some of the proposals the EU has made today, the EU seems to have moved to a position of constant change, and there are probably certain benefits in that if one is standing still and an economy may not have things right, so the President is just announcing various things that could happen. We see it in the various proposals for the tax fund, and it is good to see these aired. It does not necessarily mean they will happen.