Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

The proposed fund has the benefit that it earns a return. One implication of that is that if one invests in those things, the government debt will be higher than it would have been had it been used to pay down debt. There are, however, advantages to doing that. One is in terms of the politics but also in anticipating these future costs, which we are know are coming around ageing and are probably coming around climate, although it is less clear what those are. There is a genuine advantage to doing that. There is some advantage to the fact that investing might deliver a return. There is also an advantage, potentially, in terms of diversifying risk. We are a small country and are very dependent on some activities. If we invest some of our money globally, it will not be correlated to the Irish economy so it is also a form of risk diversification. This new kind of fund is quite different and would have, potentially, a number of advantages. One implication is that it would mean debt would be a bit higher for longer but of course Ireland is paying very low interest costs at the moment, and will continue to do so for some time. I hope my comments have been helpful in terms of thinking about these matters.