Professor Stephen Kinsella:

I see where the Deputy's question is coming from. However, the reason this is set up to deal with the demographic issue is that the demographic issue is a known known. We know it is going to happen and we know it is going to cost €8 billion. We also know climate change will cost us a lot of money. We just do not know how much. What is very interesting is that the Climate Change Advisory Council and the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council both agree that we should have a sense of what the cost of climate damage in seven years will be but there is no estimate whereas we have a very good estimate of what we think the pension cost will be. It will be €8 billion or something like that under no policy change. My very strong feeling is that this number will rise because of the issues associated with it but I am very interested in why we would keep it defined in one source of funds and one use. It strikes me that we should have many sources and many uses. That is a design decision that we will need to get into in much greater detail but I do not think it is political. It is much more a case of focusing on a known known versus an unknown known. We do not know much climate change is going to cost, therefore, we do not know how much we have to save to offset it. The problem is we know it is not cheap so it-----