Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

On the stimulus and the SME issue, the severe scenario is one in which some of the effects the Deputy is talking about turn out to be relatively important. With regard to the value of the stimulus, as I noted earlier, the €10 billion was just an illustrative figure. It would not surprise me if it were far higher than that but the time to judge how big it should be will be later in the year, particularly around the budget. It is very uncertain. As the Deputy acknowledged, there is a huge difference between €10 billion and €22 billion. I am not taking a view particularly as to which of the figures is correct but the difference is big. The judgment needs to be made with all the available information at hand. I do not believe we have that today. The figure is only illustrative. If it were much bigger, it would not surprise me. It would not necessarily be a concern for the council.

On the phases, much depends on which of the scenarios we end up in, be it the mild scenario, the severe scenario or somewhere in between. Taking the central scenario, which might be sensible, phase 1 is really now and in the short term, phase 2 would really be the recovery phase, which would be in the next couple of years, and phase 3, which is the new normal, might be from approximately 2023. Thinking about it in those terms, one notes the third phase is really a couple of years away. This corresponds with what we see in the coalition agreement that was published yesterday. Phase 1 really corresponds to the recovery fund. One can think about phase 2 as being a national economic programme, to be announced in the autumn and which will apparently have strong elements of investment and stimulus. Phase 3 really comes down to the roadmap, which will also be announced. It will set out how the Government intends to return to something close to balance by 2025. One can really see a correspondence between what is in the programme and the three phases we have outlined. The timing may vary a little but I hope the numbers I have given the Deputy give a reasonable idea of the timeline in years.