Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

Let me start with that question. As I said in a reply to an earlier question, we would focus less on the increase in public investment this year and more on the level of investment. This happens to be a period during which public investment has been ramped up a lot in Ireland. By international standards our level of investment is now pretty high.

The fact that it has not increased much is not too much of a concern. The good news is that there is a lot of money going into the economy through investment and we welcome that, both in respect of its contribution to stimulus and to wider public objectives. Therefore that is appropriate.

As to whether we should borrow more and what it should be spent on, these are very much political questions. The Deputy is right to say that this current interest rate environment is very favourable. The Government is borrowing a lot of money at long maturity, and is locking in those low rates. These actions are all consistent with the strategy that has been set out. Whether it should be doing more is a difficult question and some of it relates to the capacity of the economy and of the Government to take that money, to commit to spending it on capital projects and to do so wisely. We are not in a good position to make a judgment on that but overall, we welcome the high level of investment. Even though interest rates are very low, public debt is very high and that is a concern. There are constraints and money still must be used wisely; it is not as though it is free money.

On the issue of the Exchequer returns, we issued our report last week before the Exchequer returns and we were looking at a deficit of a little more than €20 billion this year. The Deputy is right that the Exchequer returns had quite a lot of news in them and there are quite a few moving parts involved. One is actually the shortfall on capital spending and it looks like there will be an underspend on the budget for the year as a whole. As there has been less spending than was built in as a contingency for the level 5 restrictions, it looks a though that spending will come in lower. Tax receipts through income tax and corporation tax have also been lower, so there are quite a few moving parts to the returns, but we would agree with the Deputy that the budget deficit will come in smaller than anticipated. I would have thought that around €18 billion or €19 billion would be a reasonable figure. I am not sure whether Dr. Casey wants to make a point here.