Mr. Tony Murphy:

As I said, we are doing that. I was at the Ecofin last week presenting our annual report to the ministers for finance of the member states and this is the message we were raising. We raised the same message in the European Parliament. We raise the message to the legislators but ultimately it is their decision. We do try to raise the risks. Just to put the figure into context, it is €344 billion at the moment but there is still another €220 billion in loans to be drawn down for grants and that will be done before the end of 2026, most likely. We are looking at over €500 billion, which is quite a lot of money. I fully agree with the Cathaoirleach which is why the messages we keep putting across are that the EU has postponed the problem and pushed it down the road. We jokingly say that the NextGenerationEU instrument is very well named because it is the next generation who are going to have to pay for it. That is what we consistently say. As I pointed out in the presentation, the debt is linked to the source of funding. It is linked to own resources or wherever it is going to come from and I fully agree on that. That is why I said that we are coming to a point where serious decisions are going to have to be made about where we are going.

I remember at a previous committee meeting, a member said it was an amazing turnaround for the EU to start borrowing on the markets to fund budgetary expenditure and asked me whether I thought it would continue. It may have been Deputy Howlin. These, again, are political decisions. They are taken by the ministers of finance of all the EU member states. We can only raise the issues with them. Ultimately, they are saying this is the way they want to fund the RRF. The member states effectively are guaranteeing the loans and this is where we are.

There is also concern about what will happen when the RRF finishes? Will there be another RRF? Will it be MFF-plus? What will happen? This is why I say this. As I said, we can already see the problems the EU is having negotiating the extra €66 billion for the mid-term review. I hear different stories, for example, that the EU is hoping to get this done by the end of the year, particularly for Ukraine, because it feeds into the whole American support system and the EU needs to be able to say Europe is giving X amount. There is no certainty that this will be resolved because of the budgetary pressures in member states. Someone has to pay the price; that is the problem. It goes to back to the first question Deputy Howlin asked, namely, whether the EU has the capacity to deliver what it wants to do.