Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

I thank Deputy Pearse Doherty for the opportunity to clarify our remarks. These are good questions to ask. In respect of the permanent part, which is the much more important part because we will live with it forever, the increase was a little bigger than in the summer economic statement but the difference was marginal in economic terms. To us that was the same. The Government stuck to that, which was a difficult thing to do in the circumstances. There is always much more uncertainty about what the temporary measures should be, but it also matters less because it is a one-off measure. Those measures were larger, but we did not put any particular store in a specific number. It is always a question of how much is too much. What the Government did was okay. It did not do too much.

One other matter that is relevant to this conversation is that inflation is much higher this year and will be much higher next year than was forecast at the time. The circumstances changed quite a lot and despite that, the Government stuck to its plans.