Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Of course. I am impressed to hear that the strategy appears not to be one of active management. We know from the experience of, for example, pension investment over the years that all the evidence shows that funds that are passively managed perform as well, if not better, in the longer term. While we accept and understand that the government is not directly involved in the day-to-day management of the fund and the various investments and so on, would Mr. Gjedrem say that the fund in a Norwegian context is in any way an instrument of Norwegian foreign policy? In other words, Norway has its own set of values and its own ethical and moral framework, as Ireland does, and it could be argued that we have a similarly informed foreign policy in view of our own place in the world, our soft power and the influence we can have on the world. Would Mr. Gjedrem therefore describe the Norwegian approach to the investment fund as an ethical one? Is it, by extension, an extension of Norwegian foreign policy? In other words, are there kinds of investments with which the Norwegian fund would in principle not involve itself?