 Red contacted just to briefly give an overview of what I will cover today and I suppose very much I'm going to focus on where we find ourselves now in Ireland, the economic circumstances we find ourselves in. I'm going to outline for you the strategy we have in place to tackle our current economic difficulties, and just provide you with some information on the progress we feel we have made ac oedd y dweud hynny ni oedd gael. Rwy'n cael ei wneud bod nid i'w cwntec yma, am y cyd-rhyw mwyaf, ac os ydych chi'n gofynnu'n meddwl i'w gweithio sydd yma ac ydych chi'n gweithio'r gyfer mwyaf o'r Diyarysu Cymru o'r ganddofnod o'r ddechrau. Roeddwn i'n cael ei ffordd o'r mynd yna, ac mae'n gweithio i Japanur, rydyn ni'n gweithio'r Diyarysu Cymru yn y cyfnodd cyfrifiadau cyfrifiadau that are very much underperformed, relative to European and international peers. And it was really only in the 1980s that the economy started to expand at a modest rate. The economy started to pick up slowly during the 1980s, what this graph shows, is the growth rate of over five-year periods. Yn y gweithio yng Nghymru, y Llyfrgell 80 a y Llyfrgell 90, Arlandd yn y cyfnod o'r cyfnod yng nghymru yn y Llyfrgell 12 o'r 15. Yn y Llyfrgell Prydyn, mae'n mynd i'r 70% o'r perffredig o'r Llyfrgell. Yn y gweithio yng Nghymru, mae'n mynd i'n ymgyrch o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod o'r Llyfrgell. Mae'n gw operated yng Nghymru yng Nghymru yn llawer o'r gwaith deudio yn y gyd-1990 oed. Yn y hun yw, tyfu, y period y ffordd yng ngheithfa yng nghyrch gyffredig ar y cyfnod o'r Gwyrd yng ngheith yng nghymru yng Nghymru, a er mwyn yn dod o'r cyffredig o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod o'r rhwycon yr unrhyw brynewydd â'r meddwl nghymru a'r beirfrwch yn iddu ffadir y oed yw'r gweithio'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod ynghymru. Bydd hyn yn maen nhw'n meddwl i'r unrhyw o'r anum, o'r diwrnod oedd y rymdau y 1990-on ar y cyfnodiaeth, oherwydd y cofnodiaeth gyda'r 1997, mae'n cael ei ddod i gyfnodiaeth gyda'r EU-15. A dyna'r cyfnodiaeth yma yma, ddod yn ddаю'r cyfrannwch ac yn ddau'r cyfnodiaeth, by Ireland's ability to attract foreign direct investment to the Irish economy. Now, as we moved into the first part of the last decade, I guess what happened in this period was that the economy still continued to perform fairly strongly, albeit not at the heady rates of the late 1990s, but the composition of growth changed. The economy became less competitive and growth was driven by domestic demand and particularly has been well documented by investment in housing and in residential investment. This together with, I guess, these developments left Ireland pretty poorly exposed when the international economic crisis hit in 2008. As you know, we have suffered a very serious economic contraction. GDP has fallen by about 11% from peak to trough. And this hit our public finances very, very severely, with tax revenues falling by some 30% between 2007 and 2009. Now, so we have suffered a very, very severe shock. Just to give you a snapshot of some of the things I'll cover later, we are now working through the imbalances that had built up in the economy over the earlier part of the last decade. Having suffered a very, very serious contraction in economic activity in 2008 and particularly in 2009, we are starting now to see a slow pick up in economic activity. This graph shows the rate of growth in GDP, the rate of growth, or should I say decline as it is in employment and the current account balance. And what you see is that growth returned to the economy in 2011. The rate of decline in employment is still falling, but at a much slower rate. And the third aggregate shown there, or the third indicator, our current account has moved into surplus. And I'll talk a bit about those developments in more detail as I go through the rest of the presentation. So that's just a little bit of context. Now, in terms of the theme of our discussion today is strategies for economic recovery and strategies for economic growth, well, what's our strategy? Well, in a way, our strategy is threefold essentially, three pillars to our strategy for economic recovery. And this strategy is obviously articulated in the Troika programme, which we have agreed, which the government has agreed with the IMF, the European Commission and the European Centre Bank. So there are three main planks to that. Firstly, to recapitalise and restructure our banking system. Secondly, to restore order to our public finances. And thirdly, to restore competitiveness, to improve the economy's competitive position, and to lay the conditions for a return to sustainable economic growth. And I'll talk a little bit about these strategies now as I go through the remaining slides. Firstly, just to say a little bit about the programme. The programme obviously involves financial assistance in the total amount of 85 billion euro of which 67.5 billion euro is being provided by our external partners. As I'm sure you all know, this is not a free lunch. This programme is subject to very strict conditionality. A series of particular conditions or reforms are agreed by the Irish government with our Troika counterparts. And we have to report on these every quarter and we are subject to a review mission by our Troika partners. The good news is that we have met all of the conditions so far. The Troika was here just last month and again confirmed that we had met all of the conditions for the latest period. Now, at the heart of this, the Troika programme is a programme to improve our public finances situation. And this takes the form of a multi-year programme of fiscal consolidation over the period, well going right back to 2011. But if we just look at it from here on from now until 2015, basically the programme involves a set of annual adjustments roughly broken down as between two-thirds of the adjustment being made on public expenditure and one-third in terms of increases in taxation. And you see the figures there in the budget for 2013 introduced by my Minister in December. That laid out comprised a total adjustment there was some 3.5 billion euro as again broken down as between an adjustment at expenditure of about 1.9 and revenue raising measures of a one and a half million euro. And for 2014 and 2015 taken together, the budgets for those years will involve an additional adjustment of about 5.1 billion euro. And the aim of that is to bring the budget deficit to agreed 3% target by 2015. I think it's important to bear in mind to that as well as this this kind of programme of consolidation and the Troika programme does involve various commitments to try to improve the quality of public finances in a longer-run perspective, very structural measures to improve the quality of the public finances. And these include the Fiscal Responsibility Act passed late last year. We've established an independent Irish fiscal advisory council and adopted a medium term expenditure framework. So these I think are important changes designed to ensure that we try to avoid getting into these kinds of difficulties in our public finances again. As well as the programme of consolidation and the various actions to restructure our banking system, the programme does include a strong structural reform component and this is a very this is I know an issue that Japan is facing as well. They need to consider different types of structural reforms to improve the growth potential of its economy. I think it's important to say that we are starting from a reasonably good position if you look say at the work of the OECD which is a pioneer in this area or a leading authority in the area of structural reform. Ireland scores pretty well on multi annual assessments of the flexibility of the economy in terms of its labour market and product markets. Notwithstanding that the government is active in implementing a series of reforms under Troika programme, obviously some of these are very much centred on improving the delivery of public services so there's a very ambitious programme of public sector reform and that has yielded very substantial reductions in costs of running the public service. It's been about 13% in public service salaries over the last number of years and by 2015 it's estimated that the public service will be one eighth smaller than it was in 2007. A critical issue facing Ireland and many countries in the OECD including I know Japan is the ageing of the population and one of the actions I think a critical long term reform that we have now enacted in Ireland is to increase our state pension age from 65 as it is now in a number of steps to reach 68 by 2028 when it will be the joint highest in the European Union and again this will in terms of you know looking at the public finances in a longer term perspective this is a very important reform. The problem also incorporates a number of microeconomic reforms in the area of the labour market and in product market reforms including the deregulation of some aspects of the medical and legal professions rationale there is to lower barriers to entry and increase competition in these professions which have been hit or through quite sheltered. Reflecting our very high unemployment rate there's also a series of labour market reforms which the government has pursued since taking office just over two years ago there was a major overhaul of sector wage setting mechanisms in a number of sectors and the government has launched a number of initiatives designed to increase employment and tackle unemployment this includes the jobs initiative which was a measure aimed at targeting jobs creation in labour intensive sectors mostly tourism the pathways to work program which is a labour market activation program designed to try to tackle them very serious problem of long-term unemployment now facing the Irish economy and to help the long-term unemployed find their way back into the labour market and on Friday some of you may have heard that the latest action plan for jobs for 2013 in fact was announced by the Minister for Jobs Enterprise and Innovation and this comprises a series of very specific action points all designed to increase jobs and to improve the efficiency of the labour market so that's what we've been doing now the last part of the presentation I just want to kind of try to bring together where you know what what have we you know is this all working and just to talk a little bit about the challenges that that still face face our economy I think firstly for me the probably the the the stand out development or achievement thus far has been a very substantial improvement in the competitiveness of the Irish economy and as a small open economy competitiveness is really the key to to to economic growth and what you see here in this on the graph on the left hand side is that relative to the eurozone average our labour costs are projected that by 2014 they will have improved by almost a quarter vis-a-vis the eurozone average so it's a very substantial improvement and in a way this is reflected in the performance of our export sector exports have now recovered to and in fact are now above pre-crisis levels so this again is a very significant development and as we would have I guess anticipated export growth is sort of the driving the initial phases of economic recovery and this is reflected obviously in a very significant improvement in our current account which I mentioned earlier the current account has moved into surplus and I guess you know the improvement in the recovery in in exports reflects some of the I guess enduring advantages we enjoy economy still is very open we have a presence in high technology sectors which are less prone to perhaps the cyclical downturns facing some of some of the other European countries which have found themselves in difficulty we have a well educated workforce and our population structure is still relatively favourable by by European standards and the various league tables that are compiled by different international agencies in terms of a country's attractiveness for foreign direct investment still show us doing pretty well there are issues we have to address obviously but you know in terms of key indicators our metrics like the availability of skilled labour flexibility of our workforce and the incentives available for foreign firms to invest in Ireland we are still doing pretty well in terms of the fiscal consolidation program well that's that's on track two the target for 2012 was a general government deficit of 8.6% of GDP we think in fact it will come in under 8% now the European Commission published its latest forecasts for the European economy on Friday and it's saying it I think projected that the outcome will be 7.7% of GDP so we're on target and all of the various targets for the primary deficit that's the deficit excluding interest payments and for net debt targets set out under the Troika program all of those targets have been met so far and so the program is on track to bring us to a situation where the primary balance that's the budgetary balance less interest payments should be in surplus or be it a small surplus by 2014 and the economy has returned to growth now this is not by any means anything like the seller growth rates we enjoyed in the past but the economy grew by we are estimated by about just under 1% last year and we're expecting a modest acceleration to growth in GDP of about one and a half percent this year with a gradual recovery over the medium term growth averaging about two and a half to two hundred quarters percent over the medium term and it's just important to say that these forecasts obviously to incorporate the latest information and forecasts of the international economic agencies so that is incorporated into the numbers and there's a table there showing our relative performance vis-à-vis some of our some other EU economies I guess the ultimate verdict on all of this is the one that the bond market you know decides and what you see here is a very substantial improvement narrowing in our yields and differential vis-à-vis the core EU economies of Germany in France and in fact a 10 year bond rate is now below 4% in fact and our treasury management agency has auctioned a number of short term issues and has plans to issue more so I think this is really you know a very significant development but as my secretary general said at a recent gathering this obviously assumes that we continue on the track that we're on so we have to implement the remaining commitments under the Troika programme because that is in a way in many ways probably priced into these bond yields okay having said all that we cannot in any way afford to be complacent because the economy faces very significant challenges as I've said the pattern up to now is that growth is being led by exports which is what we would have expected and that is very much on foot of the gains in competitiveness that we have secured however obviously the international economic situation and the situation in the euro zone remains very challenging and obviously that limits what we can achieve we are still you know I think for this process to to really prove successful we need to see a recovery in domestic demand but that is very difficult in circumstances where we are embarking on a very significant programme of fiscal consolidation and you know we still have a number of private sector imbalances household indebtedness to walk through so that is going to be a slow process but really a recovery into domestic economy is critical to an improvement in the labour market and an increase in employment and reduction in employment so the government is looking at what it can do to stimulate and support a domestic economy because we know that this is really critical to secure an improvement in the labour market position so just by way of conclusion covered a lot of ground and I hope I haven't confused you with all of those graphics so I think a couple of key messages firstly the economy has returned to growth 2011 for the first time in four years we do believe that the you know inherent strengths of the economy are still in place and in particular we have managed to secure a very substantial improvement in the economy's competitive position which has given rise to strong export growth and we have implemented all of the targets under the troika programme and a return to the markets is underway but obviously you know we still have a lot to do I think we have made a significant and determined policy response to the difficulties we face we are in course to eliminate to correct deficit by 2015 a determined approach is being pursued to sort out our difficulties in the banking sector there's been a large improvement in competitiveness and obviously the government is now very focused on trying to take any whatever initiatives it can take within the very difficult constraints it faces to improve the situation in the labour market and that obviously remains the standout challenge facing the economy now with a non-employment rate of 14.6% that really is is what I think now the government is very much focused on so I leave it at that I hope that's been of some interest to you in setting out you know our economic strategy here in Ireland and I look forward to participating in the rest of your discussion thank you for your attention