Mr. Eddie Casey:

I will take the Deputy's first point on the rainy day fund. I am delighted that he thinks it is a great idea. I do too, but it depends on how it is designed. One thing that we noticed recently when we did a lot of work on Ireland's cycle and its output gap was that it actually looked almost exactly the same as the pattern we have seen in investment spending as a share of GDP. During bad times it has crashed really heavily, in line with the overall economy crashing, and in good times it has risen to heights that have also been aligned with the economic cycle. That pro-cyclical pattern in investment spending by Government is a really terrible thing. There is good international research showing that construction companies find it very difficult to plan ahead on the basis of having projects for a long time-frame if they are taking on Government contracts. It means that long-term productivity in that sector is impaired.

When we need to get projects off the ground, many of those businesses are not ready to do the project work we might desire. Deputy Ryan mentioned motorway projects. We are agnostic as to the types of projects but if we continue those at a steady pace and ignore the heights and troughs of the cycle, we should be better equipped to provide them as the need arises. The planning around them would be better also.