Mr. Carlos Martínez Mongay:

I thank the Deputy. His first question referred to the extent the Commission wishes to promote and support a rainy day fund in Ireland and if the fiscal rules would need to be changed. We do not need to change the fiscal rules. The rainy day fund is consistent with the fiscal rules in the sense that it has a countercyclical nature. When the economy is booming and there are extraordinary revenues, those revenues are saved in the form of assets. They can then be spent when the economy is in a slowdown, revenues are lower and expenditures increase - to pay unemployment benefits or other things. The idea of the rainy day fund is precisely that the additional money is not spent in a procyclical way that may lead to overheating in good times. On the other hand, when revenues go down, there is then a reserve of money which can be spent in the rainy days so that it is not necessary to go to the markets to borrow money. That is the basic idea of the rainy day fund and therefore it is consistent with the spirit of the fiscal rules.