Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

It is clear that we are in a different environment. Interest rates have never been this low and are still essentially negative for Ireland. Ireland should experience quite high growth so the debt dynamics are essentially very favourable. The Deputy is correct that we are in an environment very different from the ones we have seen in the past. Of course, there are all the challenges we have talked about as well, which are not to be set aside.

The way we look at it, one can have favourite measures for the public finances but they essentially all come back to the same sorts of things. We have looked at the public finances in terms of debt sustainability. While the debt dynamics are very favourable, we have also looked at the risks around that. It is quite possible that interest rates or growth will not stay this favourable forever. That is a big concern for anyone who looks at these things. We have done a careful analysis of this, which Dr. Casey will tell the Deputy a little more about. The bottom line is that, yes, debt dynamics mean this level of debt does not create problems but we need to bring it down to a more sustainable level. Dr. Casey will explain the exercise we did to look at that question explicitly.