Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That is interesting. I will touch on the issue of interest rates, and I know we have already discussed it at length. I saw that the Chief Economist of the ECB, Professor Philip Lane, recently said that interest rates need to reach restrictive territory this year. Reuters did a poll among economists on this and they broadly said what the Central Bank said today; there is a consensus that would see two rises of 50 basis points each at the ECB's next two meetings, followed by a 25 basis point rise at the start of the second quarter. That would mean the deposit rate would be 3.25% by quarter 2. Is that forecast accurate? We have already talked about that a bit.

Does the Central Bank expect it will need to go beyond that in order to reach this restrictive territory, as it was called? I note the witnesses said clearly that we need to realise we are not in an era of low interest rates and that era is gone. I would be interested to hear if the Central Bank sees that as being restrictive territory or if it goes beyond that. Is that something we will know with time?