Mr. Gabriel Makhlouf:

That is one of the most unknown unknowns in the current circumstances, which are full of uncertainty. The future of the Irish economy, the euro-area economy and the world economy depends on the path of the virus, the speed at which a vaccine arrives and issues that we do not know about right now. As I said in my opening statement, the next six weeks will clearly impact underlying demand in Ireland and the forecast we published two weeks ago as far as 2020 is concerned, but we still anticipate a gradual recovery over the next two years. If there are repeated lockdowns, the projections and forecasts we have made will be limited. One of the many big unknowns, apart from the actions the Government decides to take here to contain the virus, will be what happens in other parts of the world, to which we are connected and which play an important part in at least keeping GDP numbers up, although they do not necessarily affect underlying domestic demand. These are unknowns. Clearly, we live in very uncertain times that are potentially changing the structure and shape of our economy. The best we can do, in my view, is to manage the health of the population, but in this I do not personally see a choice between the economy and health. As I said in my statement, a healthy economy requires a healthy workforce, healthy consumers and a healthy community. We should focus on getting the pandemic under as much control as we can in order that we can reopen the economy. However, once we see our way through the pandemic, we should be prepared for the fact that structural change could be needed because consumers may have changed their spending patterns. They may decide to continue shopping online much more than they used to do. They may start to make very different choices. It is a very challenging time for everybody. That is for sure.