Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

That is no problem. I welcome both Ministers and their teams this evening.

It is a late evening but at same time, it speaks to the importance of what we do here at the Committee on Budgetary Oversight and, more importantly, the importance of what the Ministers do in setting the budget. We are here to discuss the state of the country. The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, would have seen much more difficult times from a budget perspective in his time here. He saw critical issues during his time as a TD and in various roles. Notwithstanding that, there are different types of pressures. They almost have been the pressures of success as a country economically over the past number of years and what that brings with it but at the same time, they have to be dealt with too. With some of the economic pressures we know we are coming up against the issues of infrastructure and requirement for infrastructure. I was with the Minister, Deputy Chambers, earlier in one of the other committees, and we spoke about the need for infrastructure, specifically across the economy, and how we know that is required as part of that budget.

We know from businesses and much of the work we have done with other groups that they speak continually about the importance from an economic perspective of the question of how we can build up resilience within our own indigenous economy, small businesses and the Irish base to ensure we do have a strong economic base fundamentally and not be as reliant on the corporate windfalls. I do not mind who answers this first question and I know the Ministers cannot get into specifics but from the budget's perspective, how do we think we can build future resilience into the economy over the next year and couple of years?