Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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I will return to that. We must be awfully careful about what we do with the rainy day fund. People asked in recent years why we do not spend the rainy day fund because they thought it was raining at the time. It turns out it was not raining then. As we now know, the rapidity with which things can happen in the financial sector is so serious that we do not know what we might need in the future. My advice is that we hold on to what we have and use the rainy day fund not to spend but to hold as a means of stabilising the system in the event we need to.

We know the country is in a totally different situation from it was in in 2008. The confidence comes from good fine print. There are good processes and management, and reliability. If there is any doubt about what we are likely to do or if we want to spend our money quickly, foolishly or in the wrong places, we will pay a price.