Dr. Eddie Casey:

Both of the Deputy's questions are really good. If we think of the economy as almost a portfolio of what we are investing in, is it a bad thing to have a big exposure to jobs in tech and pharmaceuticals? It is not necessary to get rid of that exposure to diversify that risk. It is actually very helpful to have exposure to those areas because they are incredibly high-skilled jobs with very high incomes. We would actually want the economy to have that exposure in the first place. To mitigate the risks associated with it, we can try to take actions elsewhere that limit how much that affects the rest of the economy. That is why we say a savings fund would help to do that. It is why Norway did it with oil. It is not that it should have abandoned all the oil to prevent over-reliance on one asset; it is more about how it uses the revenue coming from that and how it insulates the rest of the economy.

We frequently hear that the National Pensions Reserve Fund disappeared overnight when we talk about the rationale for the savings vehicle. It is not obvious to us that, while it was raided as people say, it was necessarily a bad thing to have this cash on hand. It meant that we had a smaller EU and IMF emergency programme. It meant less borrowing on the market had to be done at the time. In times of crisis, it is much more helpful to have cash that can be drawn on when firefighting. We do not think we will get into that situation again. We do not think this would be raided and there are ways to protect it. There is always a chance of this happening but by managing the other parts of the economy prudently, including regulation of the banking system, this should not happen. Ireland really was an exceptional case in the financial crisis which was one of the worst episodes of financial distress of any country in history. We hope we will not see that again.