Mr. Kevin Timoney:

Forecasting interest rates is tricky. They obviously relate to lots of factors outside Ireland. We have done some work on forecasting interest rates but only over the long term. Two summers ago, we had the long-term sustainability report and we forecast interest rates based on market projections of safe interest rates at the euro area level. You have information from the Euribor six-month based on what the market expects interest rates to be. They have increased quite a lot since then but it is hard to say how much that feeds through into Ireland's national debt and Ireland's national debt interest. It is different for various countries depending on their maturity profile of debt. Ireland's maturity profile of debt it quite long at the moment relative to the profiles of other countries in the euro area. It is hard to say, over the short term especially, exactly what the impact will be but there are some factors in Ireland's favour relative to other countries, including the longer profile of debt maturity.