Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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To be honest, I agree. I am coming from a slightly different perspective than the witnesses or the people who are often considered to comprise the pragmatic centre and who, I believe, are advocating a return to a more dangerous approach. Is Mr. Coffey not identifying two major distortions in making his warning? It seems he is. Would he agree with the characterisation that there are two major distortions in the Irish economy such that even the normal economic measurements that measure other economies are rendered almost meaningless and have dangerous consequences - that is, people can believe they are in a far better position than is actually the case. One of the two major distortions is over-dependence on foreign direct investment and what it does to our GDP and GNP figures. The other major distortion, on which Mr. Coffey rightly spent a bit of time meditating in his introduction, concerns the housing market. Apart from involving a social emergency, it is a major macroeconomic distortion and imbalance that has skewed our whole economic position in a quite dangerous way.