Mr. John McCarthy:

That is absolutely correct and I believe the point made by Deputy Murphy relates to GDP. It has fallen by 50 percentage points. The only reason it is falling, however, is because GDP has gone up by 26% in 2015, as the Deputy has already referred to. The money amount of debt actually continues to rise. At the moment it is €200 billion but it will go up to some €210 billion over the forecast horizon, and if we look at it on a range of other metrics to get to GNI* it is about 100% at the moment. In order for the analysis not to focus on some of the green dots - and on foot of the IMF recommendations - last year we started publishing an annual debt report, which we will update in June this year. In this we look at debt across seven or eight different indicators and at interest payments as a percentage of revenue on a per capitabasis. They all show that Ireland is an outlier and that while the debt is manageable it certainly needs to be managed and that the debt to GDP ratio is an irrelevant metric for Ireland.