 I'm delighted to be here to discuss the Investment Gap in Europe and how to address it. The EIB, as the EU Bank as we like to be called, was created to do just this, was to address Europe's Investment Gap. And indeed our own President of the Bank, Werner Heuer, gave details on how the EIB achieves its objectives in a speech here actually in March 2014. Since then, the investment plan for Europe has further raised the involvement of the EIB in the European economy, but prevailing economic conditions indicate that more needs to be done. I'll also talk a little bit about how the new challenges of Brexit are facing, how we intend to address those. Given the clear threat to stronger economic recovery and the added uncertainty of the unique impact of Brexit on Ireland, action needs to be taken now to ensure that a lot of the infrastructure bottlenecks here in particular are addressed. No one knows exactly what Brexit will mean for Ireland, except that uncertainty will increase. Challenges will need to be overcome, and new opportunities for Ireland will emerge. In the short address, and I will try and get through the address as quickly as possible so we can get to the more interesting part, I'll explain the role of the EIB and how we contribute to addressing the investment gaps that hinder economic recovery across Europe. I'll turn my attention to the investment plan for Europe, how that's working, how it was designed, and kind of give that state of play on that. And in closing, I'll try and consider some of the opportunities and challenges facing Ireland in particular. The good news, obviously, is that the overall economic recovery across Europe, as we know, is looking ever healthier as it gains resilience and spreads more evenly across member states, markets and different sectors. In line with the global economy, the EU economy continues to gain resilience, and after a period of often severe adjustment towards export led growth is increasingly driven by domestic demand, obviously, which is more sustainable. GDP growth continues to improve in nearly all member states, and Ireland's economy in particular continues to bend ahead. I won't bore all of you or Dan with the statistics, you know them better than I do, but I think what's particularly encouraging about Ireland is that unlike the strong economic growth of a decade ago, it spread more evenly across a number of sectors. Labour markets across Europe continue to improve too, with employment figures picking up and the unemployment rate declining. Unemployment in Ireland has fallen below the EU average. Financing conditions across the EU appear to be improving. At a fundamental level, sovereign yields remain uncommonly low, even for longer-term and lower-rated issuers, and obviously some questions about the sustainability of that. Beyond that, bank lending rates across the EU have fallen, and lending volumes are picking up. This underlines the strength of accommodative monetary policies, which have guaranteed liquidity and low refinancing rates, as well as boosting asset values. That being said, considerable imbalances on certainties and challenges remain, especially within the euro area. The economic outlook, indeed, as President Draghi has indicated, do remain fragile. Investment in particular has sustained a severe and sustained shock, and though recovering lingers some 6 percentage points below pre-crisis levels as a percentage of European GDP. With investment gaps accumulating, long-term competitiveness is being undermined, which does little to improve this fragile outlook. As an additional constraint, policy space does remain limited, with monetary policy highly accommodative, and as we all know, as easy as it's going to get, and fiscal stabilization policies remaining dominant. Infrastructure investment across the EU has taken a major hit, as public capital expenditure was pared back successfully in the wake of austerity measures. To illustrate the point, public investment to GDP has declined across Europe from 3.2% of GDP in 2007 to 2.7% in 2016, the lowest level since data are available. In 2016, public investment levels in Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Croatia, on the periphery, if you like, and a few core countries, France and the Netherlands, are at their lowest point since 1995. Ireland in particular suffered harshly in this regard when during a period of drastically reduced GDP, the share of infrastructure spending in GDP has been more than halved and in fact is now the lowest in the European Union. Beyond infrastructure investment in the EU faces considerable challenges with important socioeconomic consequences. Let's take the labour market, for example. By historical standards, unemployment in most member states remains highly elevated. High youth and long-term unemployment rates are a particular concern, as they can give rise to, as we know, hysteresis, permanent losses of potential output. Indeed, this is particularly challenging in a time of swift global and technological change when adaptability and up-to-date skill sets are as important as never before, including as compliments to ever more sophisticated capital investment. Let me say a few words about the role of the EIB. In the Treaty of Rome, the European Economic Community committed to create a European bank. This was achieved in 1958 with the establishment of the EIB, the only bank commonly owned by the member states, and Ireland is a shareholder since its own accession to the European community in 1973. In furthering the EU's goals, the bank's current priorities are to support growth and employment, cohesion, and the fight against climate change. As a public financial institution, we distribute our funding advantage throughout Europe. In doing so, the EIB seeks to crowd in other sources of financing, particularly from the private sector, in support of high-quality investment projects, typically with a long-term orientation, looking for public good and productivity-enhancing effects of investments, such as areas such as transport networks and R&D. We enjoy a AAA credit rating, so obviously we fund on the capital markets, not through budgets, but through paid-in capital from the taxpayers of €61 billion. We've abound-shifed about €570 billion. That's about doubled, effectively, over the last decade during the crisis years, from about €300 billion. We are, in fact, the largest multilateral lender and borrower in the world. By volume, it's not well known. We do about twice the lending volumes of the World Bank every year. In 2016, the contribution of EIB Group activity to investment across Europe rose to €83.8 billion. In other words, that's our total lending volumes and investments through the European Investment Fund came to just under €84 billion last year, which, in turn, is supporting and mobilizing well over a quarter of a trillion euros, about €280 billion according to our calculations of total investment in a single year. This is a key point for us. We measure our success not just in how much we lend, but how much we, in turn, capitalise and capitalise, consistent with our philosophy that we're a crowding in bank, not a crowding out bank. Over recent years, the effect on overall investment has been growing. The results from a smarter deployment of resources, in other words, combining EIB financing with private capital, EU funds and grants, as well as national resources, as well as advisory support from the EIB's in-house experts to maximise economic effect. This is making a difference. The bank's engagement in this period, which follows the Member State finance capital increase granted in the summer of 2012 when there was a £12 billion capital increase, is expected to generate, according to our analysis, hundreds of thousands of new jobs and add an additional 0.8% to Europe's GDP once the projects are operational. As a long-term investor, the measurable effects will continue to accumulate over time. By 2030, we estimate that the EIB financing in 2015 investment will have supported 1.4 million additional European jobs and an increase in GDP of 1.1% at that stage. Earlier, I mentioned the importance of prospects for young people in particular. I just want to say one thing about our financing impacts on opportunities for young people. Since its launch in 2013, the EIB's skills and jobs investing for youth programmes provided more than 30% to projects that support jobs and skills improvement for young people. Most of that deployed in southern European countries, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece, which were particularly affected by the crisis and where youth unemployment levels were particularly elevated. Let me say a word about the investment plan for Europe. The investment plan for Europe is another crucial element in the EU's response to the poor investment climate. The EIB as the central cog, if you like, is actively implementing it. The current aim of the plan is to leverage an EU budget guarantees of about 16 billion and 5 billion of the EIB's own resources to generate a total of 315 billion euros worth of investment by financing projects in line with EU policies. Plan rest and tree pillars. The European Fund for Strategic Investments or FC, which I'll come back to, the European Investment Advisory Hub, which is basically a center of expertise within the EIB for supporting and advising member states in the preparation of investment projects and then reductions in barriers to investment across the member states themselves. So in other words, the regulatory and legislative agenda to open up new investment opportunities. But FC in fairness is the core of the plan, the Fund for Strategic Investments. It was created to finance the projects of large corporates, SMEs mainly in the areas of strategic infrastructure, digital and transport, research and innovation, education, development of renewable energies and resource efficiency, including energy efficiency. As of April 4, which is the latest data we have for our last board meeting, total approved EIB group financing stood at 34 billion euros for 477 FC projects of which the EIF, our subsidiary fund represents about a quarter. Total associated investment activity amounts to about 184 billion euros. So this is the additional investment that we mobilized, which is well over half of the original aim of 315 billion. Reflecting the perceived investment needs in Europe, but also reflecting its confidence in the EIB's capacity based on progress to date. The commission has now proposed to expand the plan to deliver investment of 500 billion euros by 2020. Now, I have to say they proposed that in Brexit, but the number 500 billion, so we just have to see to what extent the removal of the UK from those figures means the 500 billion remains intact, probably not. As I have already mentioned, lack of risk appetite and sharing are important factors underlying the poverty of the current investment climate. And in order to address this, FC eligibility requires projects to have an elevated risk profile. The EIF, our subsidiary of the European Investment Fund in particular, increasingly provides equity and quasi-equity financing to address this market cap. It's a strong focus on innovation and innovative finance and has made highly effective views of the FC support, channeling financing to where it counts the most. That is to say, into youth unemployment and innovative startup companies. Let me say a word about the opportunities and challenges for Ireland. I mean, obviously Ireland has rebounded manner and has re-established its reputation as an attractive location for business with good governance structures and strong capabilities both in the public and private sectors. In the coming years, however, I believe sustainable expansion cannot be taken for granted, particularly without more robust investment that recognises the growing bottlenecks and indeed the unique exposure of Ireland to the impact of Brexit as outlined in the government's own detailed preparation plan published this week. New investment in infrastructure in Ireland remains the lowest in the European Union. Moreover, in many parts of the country, infrastructure bottlenecks, as we all know, are already threatening recovery and holding back growth, particularly in regional locations. The EIB can help address these challenges. Since joining the EIB as our first Vice President, 12 years, have been privileged to see and hear at first hand how the EIB is financing, for example, the transforming of the campuses in UCC and Trinity. In fact, we've done loan agreements with every single Irish university in the last three to four years with the exception of one, which we will sign with, I hope, within the next five weeks. These are the first loans the Irish universities have ever taken. In fact, we're negotiating our third loan now with Trinity. All the work you can see, we'll go on and is being financed by the EIB. We're financing the improved healthcare and the availability of social housing across the country. In fact, I hope we can announce the first ever social housing PPP that we've done in any European country ever in the coming weeks. We're backing the transformation of the Port of Dublin. We're ensuring more sustainable management of the Irish forestry sector and the expansion of the Irish forestry sector. We're also supporting innovation with companies like Malin and allowing small companies to expand in cooperation with the Strategic Bank and Cooperation of Ireland. These are just some examples. In addition, our subsidiary, the EIF, has supported a number of equity funds for high tech sectors. It's also supported 20 million business angels co-investment instrument with Enterprise Ireland and a guarantee in favour of support for the smallest businesses. To support Ireland's strong economic recovery, even further, particularly in the context of the growing infrastructure bottlenecks in Ireland, as well as out of recognition that Ireland is uniquely exposed to economic effects of Brexit. The EIB hopes to increase its level of support for Irish projects even further. With this aim in mind, as well as opening a permanent office here in Dublin, headed by Cormac Murphy, who is here with us today, we have established with the Irish government last December an Ireland EIB financing group. The group, which is chaired by Minister Noonan, includes senior management from the EIB, led by the President and myself, along with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Pascual Donut and other ministers from the Irish government, as well as senior officials from relevant government departments and agencies. To support the financing group, a number of thematic working groups including three areas in particular, financing connectivity, in other words, road, rail, airports, broadband, energy networks, financing social infrastructure with a particular focus on housing, health and education, and financing enterprise through the European investment, including through the European Investment Fund that includes our support for the VC and private equity markets here, our co-financing with the Irish banks and the SBCI, without prejudging the outcome of the detailed and constructive discussions currently taking place, there are five areas in particular where we've signaled the potential for greater EIB financing. First of all, we can do more in terms of lending directly to the Irish sovereign for ex-JECR capital projects, particularly those that are to be identified in the upcoming midterm review of the public capital program. We can also do more to mobilize private finance for infrastructure, including under PPPs and similar structures for investment in roads, public transport, social housing, as I mentioned, and other areas, consistent with the government's need to expand infrastructure investment while staying within the EU fiscal rules. We can do more direct lending support for the investment programs of the Irish semi-states, and obviously these have been very long-standing and strong partners of the EIB in Ireland, notably the ESD, DAA, and others, all of whom are obviously off the government's balance sheet, and we can finance them directly to expand their own capital programs. We also want to do increased direct investment in mid-sized Irish corporates, including with equity-type products. So one area where Ireland has not benefited as much under the investment plan for Europe and EIB as other European countries is direct lending to corporates. Obviously the EIB is normally associated, rightly, with sovereign-backed infrastructure lending, but less well-known is the fact that we will do direct lending to corporates, and that's something we're able to do now under the investment plan for Europe because of this guarantee we have from the European Commission. We also want to do more credit guarantees to Irish commercial banks to increase their own lending into key sectors, such as agribusiness, residential and business energy saving projects, and the SME sector, consistent with the bank's own needs to preserve scarce capital and supporting those sectors most exposed to Brexit. And to have maximum effect in this area, these initiatives will often combine EU and national budget resources, as well as EIB and funding and capital, as well as funding and capital from the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland. And finally we can do more increased project finance for areas like the renewable energy sector, including solar, which is an area that's very well developed and beginning to make an appearance in Ireland. This Ireland EIB financing group has committed to meet at least twice a year, although the subgroups are meeting an awful lot more often. And the next meeting for the main group is planned for later in May in Luxembourg to be led by Minister Noonan. And that'll review progress with the objective to produce a much stronger pipeline of projects across multiple sectors in Ireland.