Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

The Deputy made a number of good points. First, we are aware of the danger of crying wolf but, of course, our experience and the institutional memory of what happened are that these things can build up over a long time but one must not give up what one thinks one's analysis will be because eventually it will be true and one needs to make sure one is protected.

In some ways, regarding what has happened, the dynamic we had before 2019 was fairly unhealthy in the sense that we had repeated health overruns that were essentially being financed by the corporation tax excess. Had we not had those health overruns, one can wonder what might have happened, but we might not have built in this reliance that we have. We are partly locked into it because of past policy mistakes. Looking at where we are now with the recovery, it is true that corporation tax over the past couple of years has helped us a little. It helped us well during the crisis. It was fortunate that it was strong but it could have gone the other way too. We had a tailwind but I do not think that should lead us to be complacent.

The past couple of years were not an ideal time to put money in a rainy day fund because we were spending billions of euro to support the economy. Maybe that is a reasonable point. Money is fungible. That is the circumstance where one would want to draw down from a rainy day fund. It is fine that it has not been a priority in the last couple of years. Looking ahead, we expect the economy will grow quickly. That is a period when one needs to get one's house in order. That is why we think that not increasing the over-reliance on corporation tax will be a priority for the years ahead. That is a period when you want to build up the rainy day fund. That is why we think it is important to put the rainy day fund back on the table.