Mr. John Hogan:

On the NTMA piece, over the past number of years we have seen a reprofiling and an elongation of our debt issuance. Certainly, if the Deputy looks at the cost of servicing the debt, even as far back as 2013, I believe the cost was anticipated to be in the order of about €7.5 billion. That has fallen substantially over the past number of years. The NTMA has taken advantage of the low interest rate environment to reprofile, as the Comptroller and Auditor General rightly noted in his presentation, the more expensive debt that was taken on board by the Irish State at that time. There has been a success in that regard, particularly in taking advantage of what was available on the international markets to reprofile and reorientate our debt at considerable saving to the Exchequer.

If I look at the wider debt picture at the moment, the thing to note is that we are seeing an increase in bond yields. It is very clear that the cost of borrowing internationally will increase over the next while. It is something that the Department has been signalling through our different publications over the past while, probably covered in the stability programme update, SPU, over the past number of days and certainly the annual debt report that was compiled by the Department earlier in the year. There has been a strong success in managing the reorientation of our debt into a more manageable space as we move forward. It puts us in a good situation in terms of the ongoing position of how we manage our finances over the next number of months. Does Mr. McCarthy have something he wants to add?