Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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In a way Mr. Coffey has hit the nail on the head. He is asking for a rational central scenario-type approach. The evidence is that is not actually how things work in this economy. Frankly, I think that it is fairly dramatic irrational movements of capital that decide when a downturn comes. We should behave rationally, but we know that capital does not behave rationally. What can we do to buffer ourselves against this? To my mind, the obvious thing to do is for us to be less vulnerable to sudden movements in capital, whether it is one foreign multinational pulling out or the property sector being completely controlled by a small number of players speculating and then deciding to flip the property. Should we not be spending our resources shifting things in that direction, rather than sticking it in a piggy bank, in the context of the areas where those dangers are likely to come from? Should we not ramp up investment to create a more sustainable economy as a buffer, rather putting resources in a piggy bank, which is like Peter and the dyke when a-----