Mr. Dan O'Brien:

There is extreme uncertainty about the relationship between the measures that were taken and the economic impact. There is still much uncertainty around that.

In the general terms of the conversation, it is not clear to me there is quite the sense of how serious this is from an economic perspective. Recessions are extremely bad for countries. We know that in this country and we had a very bad one between 2008 and 2012. Recessions cause social, political, economic and health damage. This one also risks intergenerational conflict, as we should be absolutely clear that younger people are at a very low risk of death from this disease. It risks bringing out intergenerational conflict if younger people, who are always most severely damaged by recessions, end up in long-term mass unemployment because of what is happening.

There was a specific question about the European Central Bank. The existing pandemic purchase programme, which is effectively money printing for governments, is due to last into the spring of next year. It is very unlikely anything will happen to disrupt that so governments should be free to borrow and spend until that point. Thereafter, some divisions among member states may emerge in terms of the risk associated with money printing. We should be clear that if money printing was a way of making everybody rich, poverty would have disappeared 500 years ago with the invention of printing presses. It is an emergency measure that will not go on forever. We certainly would not want to bank on it for a long time past next spring. Unfortunately, Ireland is not in a fantastic position, given that we go into this with quite a high level of public debt already. There is big uncertainty around how long that central banking support will last.