Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party)
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My next point is in the same area. I will put it not only to the ESRI but also, in a moment, to Professor Kinsella. As Dr. Healy said, the PBO did incredible work this year looking at the budget.

It gave us our own briefing. Something it did, perhaps to put it in context for members who might not be economists, was to talk about the Estimates for public services in 2023 and the average spend. It set out an expenditure ceiling of €90,415 million for 2023. That equates to €172,000 per minute that we are spending. They are mind-boggling numbers for someone like me. It goes down to the second too but I will not start to call those numbers. It was excellent work from the PBO and really useful.

The fiscal rules are suspended, interest rates are going up and we have added to the base, albeit perhaps not as much as all of us want. Nevertheless, particularly during Covid, we added to our core healthcare spending. Of the €172,000 we will spend per minute in 2023, €141,000 will be core spending and €22,000 will be capital expenditure. Is there a concern, even if we have not had it in the past few years, about our debt servicing costs? What does that look like in terms of the fiscal rules? Are those conversations we have sort of parked in recent years ones we must start having again, now the climate of interest rates is changing? I will start with the ESRI but I assume that Professor Kinsella will want to come in on that.