Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

I am not sure whether we would qualify these slower long-term rates of growth as secular stagnation. Really, secular stagnation is a concept relating to the global economy or the advanced countries within the global economy. Ireland's trajectory may be different. The reason we see slower growth is essentially that there is lower productivity in the world. Ireland has reached higher levels of productivity and so its ability to catch up is reduced. Ireland will also have an ageing population and that will play into growth as well. It may be that growth simply ends up being lower.

As Deputy Ryan said, one of the tools that can be used to improve the outcomes of society and long-term fiscal sustainability is an increase in growth. Obviously, there are many policies that many people have recommended in that sense. I do not believe we have specific views about that. Obviously, continuing to invest in education and innovation and continuing to make Ireland an attractive place for businesses and investment are all part of it. Beyond that we do not have a specific view about how that could be achieved.

It is important to remember that growth is not necessarily the solution that people sometimes believe it to be for the public finances. It could help, but one of the problems with growth or one thing that goes along with many forms of growth is that if wage growth is high as well, it increases the cost of providing public services. There tends to be a natural offset between the two. The long-term sustainability of the public finances may be less dependent on growth than many would assume. This is because in practice wages and welfare rates are likely to track growth. If there is higher growth, everyone gets higher income, which is a good thing. However, that does not necessarily generate large amounts of additional fiscal space.