Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I thank IBEC for its presentation.

I welcome three specific areas that IBEC highlighted in its presentation. The first of these is the need to challenge the fiscal rules in the area of investment. I suppose related to that is the good, simple and straightforward idea of a target percentage of GDP for capital investment. Frankly, the latter is something the committee should push. If one does not, as IBEC has highlighted well, with a growing population and a significant investment infrastructure deficit we will encounter serious problems. We are encountering such problems and they will get worse. I very much welcome that and agree with IBEC.

I also welcome and agree with the strong emphasis IBEC placed on social housing in its document and the need to significantly ramp up investment in that and look for a derogation on the fiscal rules, if I understood IBEC correctly. In that regard, does IBEC also think that the state aid rules are a problem for us in ramping up investment?

I firmly believe they are holding us back from being able to invest in a number of areas, including social housing and forestry, the potential of which I think we need to discuss further. Maybe the witnesses will comment on that.

Do the witnesses think there is a bit of alarmism going on with regard to Brexit, which everybody is talking about? Frankly, we do not really know what it is yet. I heard Donal O'Donovan, who is not exactly on my side of the political spectrum, correctly saying at the weekend that when the dust settles from all the political hyperbole, rhetoric and position-taking, things will settle down when it is seen that it is not really in any anybody's interests in Europe, Britain or elsewhere to create too much friction between the economies. Regardless of what we might think about the nasty racist ideas of UKIP and Theresa May, etc., the real economic imperatives and connections will assert themselves as the need for less friction becomes evident. It is already evident here between the North and the South and between this country and Britain. Nobody here thinks the discordant approach makes any sense. Do the witnesses agree that things might settle down in this respect? Many of the negative impacts we are already feeling relate to currency fluctuations. What is the view of the witnesses in that regard? My feeling is that the problems in this regard will settle down too. It is even possible that when things settle down, the English currency might increase significantly in value again. I think it will. People like a currency, like the Swiss currency, that is outside the EU and is-----