Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

That is good news. Oil prices will go up and down but, in general, the characteristics of the global economy in recent years are that high energy prices have, in turn, led to high flows of money between the oil producing companies and the rest of the world, but they had a considerable inflationary effect. The way in which the world economy works in an integrated way has led to interest rate increases in a number of countries which, in turn, may be one of the forces which has triggered some of the recent credit crises. We have to be aware of the possible threat that exists from credit markets tightening up. The evidence to date is that it is the inter-bank market that is primarily affected and that it is not necessarily constricting corporate credit excessively but it is something we have to watch for. I make this point given that we are facing difficult economic times because I am old enough, as is my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Conor Lenihan, with whom I was in college, and we are the same age, to remember the last time we faced into difficult international circumstances. The circumstances were similar in the early to mid-1980s where high, rising energy costs led to a global economic shutdown. The response in this country at that time — most of us here are old enough to remember it — was flight.

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