Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

On the broad point of climate change and investment, as Dr. Casey said, the rules are part of it but it comes down to choices as well. We do not have the luxury of just dealing with the climate change problem by itself. At the same time, most countries are ageing, many countries are facing very slow growth and a number of countries have genuine issues around fiscal sustainability. On our debt chart, they are in the risky part compared to us, as we are at a much safer level. Politicians need to make choices between how they are going to prioritise these different aspects. That in a sense has been the failure. As Dr. Casey said, it is partly through lack of planning and lack of political urgency. These choices kind of have to be made together.

In Ireland, we are in a relatively favourable position where we have quite strong growth, revenue has been quite strong and we have been able to finance those investments without having to sacrifice other things. That is really the question that faces countries that are in more difficult positions. At the same time as we have the urgency of the climate situation, we cannot ignore that we also have these other issues around fiscal sustainability and ageing that are very pressing. If we look at some of these other countries - I will not name them specifically - the way they have allocated public spending over the past couple of years has not been great. They have spent money on wasteful subsidies basically. They should have spent that money on climate change but they did not. They made that choice and it has implications for all of us because we are all operating in the same euro area debt market.

On a more positive note, what is also important and what we have not discussed so far is the role of the recovery and resilience plan at EU level. The way that is allocated, the money goes disproportionately to countries that have bigger challenges with public finances. A lot of that money has gone to Italy and a number of other countries. They are using that to finance public investment. Also if we look at eastern Europe, for many of the countries a large part of their capital investment would be financed directly through the EU and that is outside the scope of the rules. There is partly a response through these other channels that give these countries more scope to invest. Ultimately, countries need to take responsibility for the choices they make.