Mr. Seamus Coffey:

In terms of preparing the economy, from our perspective, our primary view would be to put the public finances in a position that they can deal with such an adverse shock. Significant strides have been made in recent years, primarily because of domestic developments, to improve the public finances and we are now in a position where the Government accounts are almost in balance. In our view, they are in balance in structural terms. The debt, while still high, is on a declining trajectory. These efforts should not stop now. If we see the potential for a large negative shock in future, we should prepare and create the buffers to handle such a scenario. We have made significant improvements but if we believe such a scenario is likely, we should continue with current efforts to improve the public finances.