Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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I thank the Minister. We received a very good presentation from our excellent budget advisory office team on the issue of rainy day funds. I cannot recall the exact details, but if I remember our discussions rightly, the key issue affecting the application was whether European rules would allow us to use funds we set aside in subsequent budgets in a proper counter-cyclical manner to give the Minister extra fiscal leeway. The officials seemed to advise that if there was not certainty around that, they did not see the benefit of a rainy day fund. I think that if the Government can get such certainty, a rainy day fund makes sense. Particularly in circumstances where our economy is going full throttle, previous experience suggests that we need to become counter-cyclical rather than cyclical as best we can. That is one of the lessons it is to be hoped we will learn from our economic past. Has there been any clarity from European authorities about how the application of the fund would apply in future budgets, when we came to spend it in that counter-cyclical way?

I have a second, very broad question. This is a very general question in a sense. There is a historic analysis of the past 20 or 30 years in the Western world, and maybe in other parts of the world too, which posits that there has been a shift towards capital, away from payment to labour and wages.

The power of capital has increased because of globalisation; capital can move very fast and a variety of different issues arise. The relative share of national income going to wages has fallen in a way that is detrimental in a whole range of ways. I mean in terms of providing for the needs of our people but there are also political and other knock-on effects, which we do not want. Does the Minister have a strategic sense in that regard that we, as a country, want to increase pay levels? I know that he cannot say so in light of pay negotiations. Let us consider the private sector as well. Is there an objective that goes against the trend, which has been in place for so long? One of the ways we could achieve the objective, where we would not economically damage the country, is if we had sufficient productivity growth to allow such pay. Productivity is often forgotten about in our economic statistics. Can the Minister outline, if not now then later, what productivity statistics are used? Where is the analysis on productivity returns? Where are the productivity accounts? I attended a meeting this morning and heard a figure for Northern Ireland's productivity, which showed a deeply worrying decline in productivity in the past year and is a sign of the political failure in that jurisdiction. Where are our productivity statistics? Where can I find out what is happening to Irish productivity?