Mr. John McCarthy:

It is a function of how globalised our economy is. To give the Deputy an example, exports are 120% of our GDP. No other country is as open as Ireland. We are the coalface in terms of the fragmentation of global value chains. For instance, if a firm in the pharmaceutical sector has a product which is going off-patent, it has a big impact on our GDP. Firm-specific developments have a big impact on our GDP. Some 50 firms account for 30% of our GDP. That makes it very volatile and very difficult to forecast.