Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

Over and above these issues that are aimed at trying to make monetary union come together more, there is a need to ease overall monetary policy generally. This is my view rather than necessarily that of my colleagues or my employers. In that context, it is long past time in Europe to engage in quantitative easing programmes. As economists, we know very little about how quantitative easing works. In particular, it is clear that it has an impact on banks' balance sheets but whether that translates into things in the real economy and how it is supposed to translate is very uncertain and, therefore, to some extent, it is a bit of a leap in the dark. We know that it seems to have an impact on exchange rates and the strength of the euro, which is unhelpful to Irish businesses. This is in no small part due to the fact that we have not engaged in quantitative easing. That is also relevant to the exchange rate against sterling. The UK example shows that depreciation does not necessarily create miracles for export performance. Hopefully, Ireland will be better placed to profit from that but it is difficult. All central banks are in the mode of trying to use unconventional policies, whatever they may be, to push things forward. The exchange rate will clearly help in the Irish case but we should not expect miracles because these are policies that are untested and untried and we do not understand their impact.