Mr. Matt McGann:

On the ageing population, the population will still grow but at a slower rate. The fertility rate is falling and people are living longer. There is a compositional issue in that the proportion of the overall population working by comparison with the proportion not working is changing. That has two effects. First, it affects age-related expenditure because it goes up a lot more. Second, it slows growth because a big input to growth is labour force growth. This is lost when not as many people are coming in. It has been a big driver of growth. As the Deputy correctly pointed out, a big unknown in this regard is migration. Migration can feed into it. That is difficult to forecast. The Department published a paper on population ageing and the public finances last September. We use EUROSTAT projections for the demographics, fertility rate, long-term growth rate in the economy, etc. The increase in age-related expenditure will place a huge burden on the public finances. I would be happy to send on the paper from last September, which goes into a lot of detail on all those aspects.