Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

It is a different debate as to whether we would voluntarily go further. The point I am making is that if we make an adjustment of €3.6 billion, we may not reach a deficit of €8.6 billion. With that, we have to go further just to arrive at €8.6 billion. Whether, as a policy measure, it would be desirable to go further is another issue. We are pitching for the deficit of €8.6 billion. That is our target and in the breakdown in the programme it is an adjustment of €2.1 billion in expenditure and €1.5 billion in tax measures. That is how it is made up and we are trying to figure out how to achieve that. We have not got enough information yet to know precisely what the correction will be, but we are working on the targets in the programme. It is a secondary issue whether we will go further or not. There is mixed advice on that. The IMF says "No". It says going further would take too much demand out of the economy and if we just meet the target, that will be sufficient. The European authorities, the Commission in particular, are pushing us to go harder. There are mixed views within the troika and we must make the best judgment ourselves.

The days of Keynesian economics and big demand stimulus packages are gone. We do not have the money for that. However, one of the purposes of NewERA is to provide some element of a stimulus package and we are opting to go for new infrastructure and better water systems.