Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests and thank them for their contributions, not only now but over the years. I have had occasion, as I am sure everybody has had from time to time, to question some of the decisions and opinions at particular times. The difficulty is from the point of view of the experiences of the past. How much have we learned? We are in a pretty difficult situation at present, not because our economy is going badly but because we are not in a position to deliver the options the public sees as being available. We are not in a position to deliver because, for example, and we have just mentioned house prices, house prices are having a much bigger negative impact on the economy than we think. We can say we do not build them if we do not pay for them and so on. The problem I see is that the selling price of this month's house becomes the starting price for next month's house and next year's house. The multiplier continues to evolve rapidly, to such an extent that I cannot see where it is going to stop. Various resolutions have been put forward. One is that the witnesses have warned, rightly, against the use of our healthy economy and corporation tax profits to fund day-to-day expenditure. We know about that. We also know, although not much has been said about it, that we have a total debt of approximately €210 billion. It is a sizeable amount. At the same time, there is reluctance to put money into a reserve. Even though the reserve is right, there is reluctance coming from some quarters.

How do the witnesses see the economy, the country, the Government and the public managing to absorb the challenges ahead in the short term? There is an inability to deal directly. We cannot deal directly by paying for everybody's shopping basket. Yes, cost-of-living crises are built into the system in such a way that there must be some reaction to it.

We must try to stabilise it or slow it down a little to give a little bit of hope there. What in the opinion of our guests is the appropriate way to go about this?