Mr. Fergal O'Brien:

I will work through some of Deputy Lawlor's other comments. On the issue of sticking to the adjustment and using what might be spare for investment, I can see the merit in that. We need investment in the economy, but there are other ways we can get that investment outside of the Exchequer. Given what households have gone through over the past number of years, I am not sure it is right to tax people more so that we can pick investment projects. Because we have done the hard yards on the public finances, we have options for investment. Companies have money to invest if we give them the right incentives. We can look at public-private partnerships in the public capital investment projects.

I very much agree with Deputy Lawlor on trying to generate activity for the small contractors. We have a specific proposal for a home improvement scheme. We have looked at half a dozen schemes internationally. They all work and pay for themselves, and the cost-benefit analysis is all there. We will provide that to the committee in the full submission. From our point of view, one of the great benefits of such a scheme would be one gets a great regional distribution of the activity. At present, the Dublin economy is doing okay. Outside of Dublin is not so good. It is a case of whether we could get something that would really get around the country and get at the unemployment problem, particularly among the former construction workers. Home improvement has the potential to do that. We have seen half a dozen schemes that have worked really well and we have a sense of frustration that we have not been able to gain traction on this domestically. We would be happy to engage with the Deputy on the detail of that. We have a good deal of detail and analysis on that in a separate paper.