Dr. Robert Kelly:

How governments think about the trade-off between spending, even when they think about future spending and tax and revenue-raising measures now, that balance is something they need to think about where they want the incidences of tax to fall. That is one for them to consider when it comes. I very much agree with the Deputy's point that we have this ageing population. We have looked at this. There are definitely signs that as we progress through the next decade, we are going to have higher and higher levels of dependency on the State.

The future Ireland fund and the way in which that was created actually finds a nice balance between two things, one of which is the excess corporation tax receipts we talked quite a bit about. We need to build a resilience and not allow them become part of core spending because if, for any given reason, they were to stop, we would have an instant problem. At the same time, we should build up a fund, such as the future Ireland fund, building resilience, which speaks to the Deputy's point. We will have an amount of funding so that when we see this demographic shift happen, it can help support it. As I said, when we look at the Department of Finance's scenarios, it does not necessarily cover all of them, but it certainly makes inroads in terms of what will need to be provided for in the future.