 Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. First of all, I would like to thank the organizers of this event, European Commission's representation in Ireland together with Institute for International and European Affairs for organizing this event dedicated to European Commission's assessment of Irish economy and country-specific recommendations. I would like to apologize for not being able to be with you here today in Dublin due to the last-minute calendar changes. European Commission's Chief Economic Analyst Philip Rottier has kindly agreed to step in in a short notice and he will be available also later for your questions and comments regarding the Commission's assessment of Irish economy. Let me start with a broader European economic context and then move specifically to the citation in Ireland. As we know, European economy is continuing to recover, but we are having a quite modest recovery. Economic growth rates in both EU as a whole and in Euro area are below 2% and we are facing certain headwinds. They are stemming from uncertain geopolitical citation in our neighborhood, both southern neighborhood and eastern neighborhood. They are related to the slowdown of emerging economies and certain volatility in financial markets. So our focus should be on how we can strengthen the economic recovery Europe is currently experiencing. And we have set out three European Economic Policy priorities in our annual growth survey. Those are to facilitate investment, to have renewed focus on structural reforms to modernize our economies and to continue with fiscally responsible policies. First on investment. What we are seeing is that since global financial and economical crisis, investment levels in Europe have not recovered to what is considered a sustainable long-term trend level of some 20% to 21% of GDP. So what we need to do is to strengthen the investment and that's why one of the European Commission's first initiatives since taking office was European Investment Plan, European Fund for Strategic Investment, also known as Junker Investment Plan. The aim is to mobilize at least 315 billion euros of both public and private investment within three years time frame. And already now investment project which has been approved has allowed for some investment of 100 billion euros to be unlocked. So we can say we are firmly on track as regards European Investment Plan. Of course investment is not only about European Fund for Strategic Investment, it's also about creating the right investment environment. That's why in this year's European semester we are also concentrating to investment barriers in a different member state. Second structural reforms. Structural reforms are needed both at European and at member states level. At European level it mainly concerns strengthening of EU internal market, removing the remaining barriers. And it's especially relevant in areas like services, like energy, like digital single market. In case of member states, there are different reforms in different member states, but some of the recurring issues are reforms related to the labour markets, finding the right balance between flexibility and security, reforms related to the long term sustainability of our social and pension and healthcare systems. In a situation of population aging, those are reforms related to taxation, shifting away tax burden from labour, especially low paid labour to other tax bases which are less detrimental to growth. There are reforms related to inefficiencies in goods and services markets in member states and so on and so forth. As regards fiscal responsibility. This is probably something which is discussed most, but it's clear that there's no such thing as sustainable economic growth without sustainable public finances. That's why it's so important that member states continue their fiscal adjustments where it's needed, that member states are correcting their excessive deficits and also putting their public debt on the downwards trajectory. All in all, a situation is improving and average budget deficits and average public debt levels are going down. And already this year, we have a slightly expansionary fiscal stance in Euro area as a whole. It means while nominal budget deficits continue to go down, in structural terms we already see some easing. And we believe that this policy mix, slightly expansionary fiscal stance, together with a commercial monetary policy of European Central Bank, is the right policy mix given the circumstances and helps to strengthen the European recovery. Now to move to situation specifically in Ireland. Indeed, Ireland is being used as an example of the country which has made a remarkable turnaround from deep financial and economical crisis to the fastest growing economy in the European Union. And if we look at Ireland's economic growth rates, they are indeed impressive. Last year's growth of 7.8% and also this year European Commission forecasts economic growth of almost 5%. And we also see that Ireland has done remarkable progress in its public finances. So last month's European Commission took a decision to abrogate Ireland from the excessive deficit procedure. We see public debt on clear downwards trajectory, 2.3% of GDP last year, moving down to 1.1% of GDP this year. Also public debt is clearly on downwards pass and is expected to move below 90% of GDP already at the end of this year. Of course, it's important that Ireland does not lose with this positive momentum that it continues with responsible fiscal policies and continues with the structural reforms needed in Ireland. Because according to European Commission assessment, despite this very fast economic growth rate, there is still assessment that Ireland is experiencing macroeconomic imbalances which needs to be addressed. Now to move to the country specific recommendations which we are addressing at Ireland this year. First recommendation as to all other member states concerns of fiscal policy where we encourage Ireland to continue with its adjustment path towards medium term budgetary objective and we have certain observations relating to the tax base. Our recommendation is to broaden the tax base in Ireland to also rely more on consumption taxation, on taxation of property, on environmental taxation because what we have seen in Ireland is relatively volatile tax revenues. And of course this volatility may ensure very fast revenue growth during the boom years but then also very dramatic fall in revenues during the crisis. This is something which we had seen before and there is a clearly need to stabilize the tax revenues. That's why we house this recommendation on broadening tax base to reduce revenue volatility in Ireland. Second recommendation concerns labour market policies where our general advice to member states is to pursue labour market policies which allow for broad participation in the labour market. In case of Ireland there are recommendations concerning the activation policies meaning more targeted work with categories of people which are at the risk of economic inactivity to link the benefits provided to those people with activation policies ensuring that people especially for example long term unemployed are returning to the labour market. The same concerns the question of tapering of unemployed and other benefits to provide better incentives for people to return to the labour market. Basically what we see now is a situation when people take the job, the unemployment benefits are immediately and other benefits immediately stopped and if they are taking relatively low paid job there may be actually quite little practical benefit for person taking a job instead of relying on benefits. So we suggest tapering those benefits making some more gradual exit from benefits when the person is taking the job so that people are actually having more incentives to return to the labour market. And this recommendation also concerns parents including single parents and addressing the problem of child poverty with also ensuring participation of parents in the labour market including by providing, by improving the accessibility and affordable child care benefits to the parents in Ireland. Our third recommendation concerns financial sector where we still see relatively large share of non-performing loans even though situation is clearly improving and we know it's a legacy issue from the financial and economical crisis. We still see that determined effort is needed to tackle the problem of non-performing loans also to allow for the financial sector to provide credit to the real economy once again. So we get to this recommendation on the credit registry to basically speed up the work on phasing in of the credit registry which would cover all different kinds of credits and debt so that there is a full information on the situation of creditors. But once again all in all our assessment of Irish economic performance and also fiscal performance is positive. Ireland has made a remarkable turnaround. We hope that this year's country specific recommendations will help to address some of the imbalances which we see Ireland is still experiencing and our main message is to stay on course and not to lose this reform momentum. Thank you for your attention and as I said, Chief Economic Analyst of European Commission, Philip Rother will be available for your questions and comments. Thank you.