Sean Barrett (Independent)
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I think Professor McHale has captured the points. I appreciate his work on the multipliers. As legislators, we get examples all the time whereby if a certain amount of money was given to project X, some 84 million people would immediately be employed. Professor McHale's work on trying to put some sense into that is valuable. It should be widely distributed to Deputies, Senators and senior civil servants. I find that most of the sectoral Departments have been completely unreformed since 2008. As a professional outside body, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council has to draw attention to that from time to time. If all the bits add up to an unsatisfactory macro performance, the same people who crashed the economy in 2008 could be back for an encore. I therefore welcome what Professor McHale has said on that.

I would echo what Deputy Boyd Barrett said about the Finance Bill and property bubbles. I do not know how good we are about Keynesianism these days. In the United States a stock exchange bubble is threatening noises if quantitative easing is relaxed at all. It is main street versus Wall Street. I would be afraid of starting a property bubble again and I echo Deputy Boyd Barrett's sentiments in that regard. Part of it must be that there is no rate of interest on savings so, in fact, we are diverting savings into bubbles. That is a consequence of the ECB's policy of not paying anything on savings. In that context, are the other eurozone countries aware of, or have they addressed, this question whereby not paying interest on savings will lead to property bubbles? We were the blatant example.

I am absolutely delighted with economic growth of 0.2% and 3.8% employment growth, but does Professor McHale have any thoughts on that? It is terrific that it has happened.

Professor Alan Barrett used to write about jobless growth by growthless jobs. Is this sustainable? Has the delegation thought from its work in other countries as to what happens at this stage when one gets this employment boost? The boost is due mainly to self-employment rather than in the traditional sectors.