Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I am optimistic we would be able to do it. Organisations such as the IMF are very supportive of the principle we are looking at here. One of the main thrusts of current EU policy is that expenditure or macroeconomic decisions by governments should take account of where an economy is at a particular point in its cycle. That is why we have so much focus on something that is simple in concept but very difficult to measure, which is the structural performance of an economy. That is an ongoing spread of all EU economic policy at the moment.

On the Chairman's final question about whether the use of such expenditure would breach existing fiscal rules, my view is it would not but clearly we would have to work it all out with the Commission. The reason is the fiscal rules recognise that events can occur within any economy that require expenditure to be incurred to offset their effect. While I cannot prejudge what the Commission would say about it, I am pretty hopeful it would see it as a good idea.