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

To be honest, I did not understand Mr. Coffey's last contribution to Deputy Ryan about where emigrants move to. If a person is in Iowa, he or she can move 1,700 miles to California for a job and not necessarily just next door. People do not make moves based on monetary union. They move to where believe the best opportunities are for them and their families. They may move quite a distance.

My main point is something about which I have always had an issue in terms of not so much an inability to understand, more a problem in accepting. It concerns our GNI* makey-up thing we came up with in order that we would not have to accept GDP. While I have a problem with it in general, something I am on the record as having said, I have a real problem with page 17 of the statement where the GNI* is incorporated into figures versus the GDP for other countries. In one of Mr. Coffey's contributions, I believe when answering Deputy Burton, he said that if the other countries did that, they would move as well.

I wonder what type of chart the IFAC is preparing if that is the case and if Ireland has a chart that only we accept. One cannot say how the other countries would move, seeing as how it took us a year to come up with GNI*, so there is no real indication.

Even if GNI* is only for Ireland, the IFAC must devise a GNI* graph for everyone and incorporate it into the figures. It would be crazy if GNI* allowed people to walk out of this room claiming that we were fourth on GNI* versus this or that. We are not. It means nothing if the graph is done that way. I would be interested in Mr. Coffey's view as to why the IFAC did this.