Professor Alan Barrett:

I will be.

Economists agree on very few things, but the one thing on which we do agree is that when the economy is growing at a particular rate, we want a contractionary fiscal policy and when it is growing much more slowly, we need an expansionary fiscal policy to lean against the wind. The point I was making in my earlier intervention was that when the recession kicked in, for a lot of European countries it would have been perfectly possible to pursue Keynesian economic policies which were expansionary. At a European level, that sort of policy would have made sense. However, Ireland did not have that option; we were in such dire straits that it was not feasible for us. There was a need for a particular policy here, but one can still make the case that there would have been another possibility elsewhere.

In terms of education, I can see the point, but we will not solve the matter now and will keep discussing it. There is a critical point that we would like education to be free from the cradle to the grave in the same way we would like health care to be free from the cradle to the grave, but, unfortunately, there are so many things we have to prioritise. Sensible people can disagree on where choices have to be made.