Dr. Tom McDonnell:

It is a very good point. There probably should be a different inflationary indicator that focuses on low-income households and the basket of goods they purchase. That could be done by the surveys of households as to what they have been spending. Again, there would be a lag and it would not be real-time but it would certainly be an improvement on what we have. The focus there would be on lower income households. It should be remembered that what we and Social Justice Ireland are proposing is wage indexation, so it would be relevant in dealing only with these very specific shocks such as we are seeing with energy prices at the moment. I ask the committee to remember that we have had about a decade of very stable prices.

It could be a case of creating all this new infrastructure and administration and never having to use it again for another ten or 15 years because these energy shocks are unusual and something we have not seen much of in the last 15 years.