Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Draghi for taking time to attend our committee meeting. I have two brief questions. First, Deputy Michael McGrath mentioned the capacity of our economy to grow in terms of servicing our national debt. Our national debt for 2018 is approximately €205 billion. Percentage wise, it is somewhere in the mid-60s in terms of our GDP ratio. The amount of our national budget required to service that debt is quite significant. In 2007-2008, it was just over 3% and peaked at around 15%. Twenty-five per cent of our national debt is made up of banking debt in terms of rescuing the banking system. How aware is Mr. Draghi of how vulnerable we are in terms of that liability on our balance sheet? In his view, what are the implications of the asset management programme coming to an end?

Second, €500 million from the budget and €1.5 billion from our investment bank was put into a rainy day fund established by our Government this year. The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council made a point about the fiscal rules being unable to deal with the countercyclical nature by which a rainy day fund would be deployed. In other words, when it comes to spending the money in that fund, the fiscal rules are imperfect in terms of dealing with that. I would like to hear Mr. Draghi's views on that.