Dr. Martin O'Brien:

As part of our mandate, we try to engage with broader stakeholders as much as we can. We have civil society round tables and meet groups like this. The deputy governor, the Governor and other executive members travel the country and engage with business leaders and civil society groups. It is the same message we would be bringing to those communities and sectors around the need for a broad perspective and looking at the medium-to-long term. The medium-term fiscal plan that the Government has to work toward provides good guidance and constraint around the way net expenditure should grow into the future. It is important the Government reflects on that and communicates as much as it can, just as the Ministers did when they were before the committee.

In terms of the appropriateness of interest rate policy for Ireland vis-à-vis the euro area, it is important to note that the Covid shock we saw, its inflationary spike, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the inflationary spike related to that were common shocks. Across the board, we saw this hike in inflation at euro area level and in individual countries. We then saw a similar deceleration in inflation as interest rates went up before coming down. It is not that there has been an idiosyncratic, Irish-specific issue that has been a problem with having a single monetary policy for the euro area. The risk is that, at some point in time, there becomes an idiosyncratic, Irish-specific issue that means-----