Mr. Vasileios Madouros:

Labour from abroad, including the return of people who have emigrated, could ease some of the supply constraints in the labour market. As the Governor mentioned, one of the areas we focused on in the analysis we published a few weeks ago was the productivity of the construction sector. Due to the long tail of the crisis, investment by the construction sector in machinery and equipment has been a lot lower than in other countries. The outcome is that construction productivity in Ireland, relative to other euro area countries, is at the lower end. Non-fiscal interventions that can support productivity in construction can also help to ease some of the trade-offs because you can produce a greater output with a small labour input.