Professor John FitzGerald:

In terms of economics, I have my grand-aunt's economics notes from when she studied economics in Cambridge in 1922. She had received lectures from Arthur Pigou, one of the great economic thinkers of the time. He pointed out that having a carbon tax was the way to go in dealing with environmental issues where there is wider damage that is unpriced. Economics for 100 years has said that this is the beginning. However, one needs far more than that. One needs major regulatory changes and so forth. The economics thinking has evolved. A guy called William Nordhaus won the Nobel Prize for economics last year or the year before and he was working on this in the 1970s. He spotted the damage which the scientists said was being done to the climate and started working on it. The economics of this has not changed dramatically over 50 years or a century. The broad answers are unchanged. The detail is different because people behave differently and if one does not take account of how people behave and what they hear, it will not work. There is much interesting work being done on the details, but, although people might disagree, the broad parameters of environmental economics have not changed greatly.

At the detailed level in terms of Covid and the current crisis, I have written on this in terms of macroeconomics. Households are saving like mad, not just in Ireland and across the EU but also in the United States until the stimulus was stopped there. That might change after the election next week. At the end of next year, we will, hopefully, have a vaccine and go back to normal. The issue is what people do with their savings. I want to visit my three children who are living abroad. That is not good for climate change, but I want to see my children and grandchildren. That is one thing, but there is a large amount of money there which could be used to retrofit houses. Looking at an opportunity for ramping up in 2022 is one area. The other area is State investment in areas that would be important in terms of the green future. First, there would be enhanced EU funding for it, and we will have to expand the infrastructure. Yes, there are things we can do post Covid at the detailed level.

Did the Senator have a second question that I have forgotten?