Dr. Tom McDonnell:

To follow on, from that, we completely agree the narrowness of the tax base and of the economy is terrifying, frankly. The budgetary figures look good, but we know that they are contingent upon the decisions of half a dozen companies and boards making decisions in Washington or California or whatever it might be, and that is frankly a very unhealthy position to be in. There is very little we can do about those decisions, ultimately. Certainly it is not going to be about labour costs or anything like that. The levels are much beyond that.

As we talk about in our summation, we must resolve the productivity problem in our domestic enterprise base, North and South. It is about asking what can do in the longer term. We are not going to change the productivity of an existing firm to any great degree, although we can provide supports. It will be about figuring out how to generate companies in different sectors that are more productive and putting our eggs in those baskets rather than what we have been doing so far.

To partially answer Deputy McCormack's question, and he has already alluded to the issue, energy cost is a clear area of policy failure in Ireland. We know energy costs in Ireland went from being one of the lowest in western Europe to one of the highest over a 30-year period. Prices started to go up in the 2000s. It was a policy failure. Something that would help workers with the cost of living and would help enterprises in every sector is the lowering of energy costs. That would improve our competitiveness without having to do anything on the productivity side. There needs to be a co-ordinated and massive programme of State investment in renewable energy infrastructure so we are not reliant on gas to set the price. That would allow us to bring costs and prices down throughout the economy. That would be a clear win and it is an area we need to focus on as a priority.