Mr. Shane Enright:

For the blockbuster drugs, as they are known, a lot of the patents were granted in the 1990s and the 20-year period is coming up at the moment. There are charts here which illustrate some of the developments. Exports to the US are leading the decline and we think this is indicative of the patents story, given that patents are generally filed in the US first and expire in the US first as well.

To run through developments in the domestic economy in recent months, we are looking here at core retail sales. We tend to focus on core retail sales, which exclude cars as car purchases are quite volatile and are entirely imported in the Irish context. They have been in positive territory in the first nine months of the year, with some weakness over the early summer, possibly weather related, but there has been reasonable growth of over 1% in the last number of months. The retail sales inform our view in the forecasts of where we think private consumption for the year is going to go.