Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I was listening to a portion of the meeting online between various other commitments this morning. I wish Mr. Hogan and his colleagues a good afternoon. It is good to have them before us again.

I will start with the Comptroller and Auditor General's opening statements. He said the national debt is €237 billion. That is up on the end of 2020 by €17.7 billion. He also said that it was 20% lower than that of 2020 on foot of the NTMA's ability to avail of the low interest rates over recent years. How does Mr. Hogan see the various interest rates, the challenges from inflation and everything else happening over the next number of months and potentially years - although hopefully not - impacting on our national debt going forward?