Mr. John Hogan:

We are doing our projections in respect of corporation for next year anyway, and our anticipation is there is not going to be any material impact, as we see it currently, for the period in 2023. The Deputy is absolutely right; the interest rate environment is changing and there is a reaction from central banks to the nature of the international environment they are facing. Central banks, over recent years through the pandemic, have been engaged in quantitative easing, QE, facilitating more money into the economy, but we are now seeing them move in an opposite direction, namely, increasing interest rates. Thankfully, the National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA, over recent years has done a very effective job in smoothing out and lengthening Ireland's debt profile. We have seen even in recent weeks an announcement that it is not going to need to go to the market for the remainder of the year, and I think it is calculating its likely borrowing for next year, which is going to be reasonably modest to cover two things. One is the expectation that the sovereign should be in the debt market and should continue to borrow to some extent, but the cash buffers it has, that is, the ability to smooth out and lengthen our debt profile, have been very effective for our approach.

The second point is that, as the Comptroller and Auditor General noted, our debt servicing costs have moderated over recent years and an effective job has been done on that, which again leads us into a strong position.