Mr. John McCarthy:

I will add to it very briefly. Within the stability programme we have revised down our forecast for this year. We are projecting modified domestic demand, which is our preferred measure of economic activity, of approximately 4.25% for this year. At the time of the budget we were talking about 6.5%. Over the medium term we see the economy has the capacity to grow by approximately 3% to 3.5%.

What is the Government doing in terms of trying to build resilience etc? My view is we are probably living in a more shock-prone world at this stage. Already since the start of this decade we have had a global pandemic, war on European soil and we have a much slower moving but nonetheless significant shock, namely, Brexit. Government is trying to build buffers to be able to address those shocks over time.

The key innovations were set out in the summer economic statement last year. Government is setting budgetary policy within a medium-term framework and setting spending within the trend growth rate of revenue but also, within that, ramping up its public capital programme. It is spending €12 billion to €13 billion per annum. Only a decade ago, if I was sitting here, we would be talking about spending €4 billion per annum on capital. It is boosting the supply side, addressing bottlenecks and ensuring Ireland remains attractive using all that public capital programme.

Of course, it is not all in physical infrastructure. It is in human capital as well because that will increasingly be a part of Ireland's attractiveness in years to come. That sort of macro framework is how Government is trying to build up resilience and build up buffers to this more shock-prone economy we are in.