Dr. Alan Barrett:

My next remarks are in the spirit of Whitaker. Some of the questions have related to the idea of preparing. They are institutional questions on whether there should be committees. To give an overview on this, the Department of Finance and most treasuries throughout the world conduct ongoing exercises where they project their public finances in a forward-looking way and ask questions about how the public finances will evolve. This blew up in the United Kingdom only a week or two ago when a government chose to have a fiscal event and not have this sort of analytical underpinning. Typically, population ageing is the issue that is normally front and centre and treasuries try to work out the trajectory as people get older with regard to pensions and healthcare. Climate change is now featuring much more in these analyses, partly in the sense of the costs of actions. There is also a question about being successful in the green transition. This is what we will do when we lose all the fuel duty. The British are very conscious of this and show the difficulties it could create.

It strikes me that an obvious exercise for the Irish Department of Finance, as part of the overall forward-looking planning exercise, is to look at reunification as a possibility. I will move on and say quickly that just because people are looking at it, it does not mean they are in favour of it or insisting on it. One of the issues that consumes our Department of Finance is the corporation tax issue and the possibility of it declining in future years. Those in the Department think about this and plan for it. It does not mean they are hoping it will happen. These can be mechanical technical exercises. I am of the view that since this might happen it would be a good idea for the Department of Finance to integrate these considerations as part of its overall forward-looking exercises. As some of the questions have indicated, these are very technical issues that require detailed measurement and analysis of issues such as a minimum wage, combining the social welfare systems and the health systems. All of these matters require minute analytical firepower. This is a good place to do it. The idea of having parliamentary committees overseeing this is certainly very good but we need people getting in to the real roots of it. There is a reluctance because of the sensitivity of the issue but I urge people to put aside the sensitivities and start to treat technical issues and possible future events for what they are.