 Okay, in case you don't know, I'm a retired professor of economics in Trinity, but I still teach an economics course on European integration. So I want to welcome everyone to the lecture, especially following the unexpected topic earlier, which is close to my heart, labour markets in the EU. We want in particular to thank Mr Draghi, of course, president of the European Central Bank, and Professor Philip Lane, governor of the Central Bank of Ireland. It's a great honour for me and all of us to be part of this very special occasion. So did you know who you're mixing with? The audience is overwhelmingly economic students in Trinity, undergraduate, MSc and postgraduate. We also have some staff here, and we have the committee of the Philosophical Society, but more about that later. Philip is an economics graduate of this college, and he's a professor, the Whitney Professor, on the Department of Economics. The first work I got from Philip as a student was in Mickey Mouse term in the senior first year, and he handed me an essay then that has had and had all the hallmarks of Philip Lane. First of all, it was extremely intelligent. Secondly, he wrote in an incredibly tightly argued structure. And thirdly, he was very sparing with words, both written and oral ever since. In fact, I often said to students when they're reading the chapter in the book, make sure you have to read Philip Lane's paragraphs five times compared to everybody else's once. I just wanted to say in the presence of Philip and Mr. Draghi, we're immensely proud of Philip's achievements as an academic and also immensely proud of his achievements in the world of central banking. Now to Mr. Draghi. I often wonder, any of you who do the European economy course, why Italy as a nation doesn't play a bigger role in European affairs and Eurozone affairs? I've never been able to work that out because it's the same size as France, but yet it has much less prominence. Yet, there are some individual Italians who have made a huge impact at a European level. And one of those, of course, is Mr. Draghi. According to the Financial Times about a week ago, I had a major review about the turnaround of the Eurozone economy and then the Euro. And they accredited almost solely the reason for that turnaround, what they called Super Mario, what all of us will call Mr. Draghi. Philip is going to moderate the question and answer session now for maybe 25 minutes or so. Then after that, Conor McCormack, president of the field, will make a presentation to Mr. Draghi. Then there will be some closing remarks by myself. So I hand you over to Philip. Thank you, John. So let me welcome you all to this second ECB youth dialogue. There's one, a similar event was held in Lisbon back in June, which I think went quite well. Of course, with the modern social media and so on, there can be a lot of people that are across Europe following the dialogue this morning through the ECB website. So I think that's great to combine the importance of having the physical interaction here at a local level with the students here today, but also the amplitude of that through the web and so on. So I look forward to the dialogue. I'll be calling on a list of students to ask their questions. Time is limited, but I think we can have quite an interesting exchange. I would also say that Trinity, I think I always say this wherever I would go, Trinity College has always been somewhere where the students have had a high level of participation in the economics debate through the student economic review, through various debating societies and so on, and through a lot of interaction with the staff. I think Professor Hagen has been very much the leader of that over many decades, John, and so it's very nice to have this event here today. So let's get going, and first of all, Colin Aditya Garg to ask a question. Good morning, President Jagi and Governor Lane. So some five years ago, five and a half years ago, you delivered what is often cited as the most influential speech by any economist in the history, and during the course of your whatever it takes speech, you mentioned some short-term challenges and particularly pertaining to the, how the inter-banking system was broken and needed some recalibration. So since then, a lot has changed, especially with Brexit now playing out. So looking back, my question is looking back, do you think you've achieved the challenges that you set out back then, and looking forward, what are some of the challenges that you see that the euro faces today? You asked me to go back with memory to that year, 2012, and what has happened two years before, starting in 2010, was a progressive decrease in trust of the euro as an institutional construction. The financial crisis started at the end of 2007, actually left in Europe, left countries, governments with very high debt, low growth, and that put in question the sustainability of government budgets. It created a very significant increase in interest rates, started the recession, and this morphed into a banking crisis because banks, some of the banks at least, especially in the periphery, actually had a substantial part of their portfolios invested in government bonds that have lost value in the meantime. That in turn became what we call fragmentation of the banking and financial system in the euro area, which basically means that some parts of the euro area had no problem about funding the real economy, the banks were working, and other parts were not. In other parts, banks were not working. It was a credit crunch. It meant that when we changed the interest rates at that time, we still changed interest rates. I remember that I started in November 2011, and we changed the first time exactly two days after my starting, and then the second time was a month later in December, so it was pretty clear that it was a drop in credit flows all throughout, but these movements, these changes in interest rates were transmitted into lower lending rates in the core countries where banks were actually functioning, the banking system, with positive effects on the real economy and were not in other parts of the euro area. So what was at risk was basically the existence of the euro, at least what we call re-denomination risk. And what was at risk was the unicity of our monetary policy, whereby when we change rates, we expect that this being transmitted in the whole of the euro area. And so the response was, first of all, response to the crisis time, reaffirming, deciding, and the governing council did exactly that through what was called OMT, Outright Monetary Transactions, which was the implementation of whatever it takes, and addressed the crisis time, and the re-denomination risk was fought and the challenge was won by the end of 2012. And second, and in a sense longer undertaking, was to rebuild the banking system and the financial system, basically fighting against this fragmentation we had. And that took longer, that took longer. Now we can say fragmentation is gone, now it's gone has been, I think it basically went about two years ago, and since then we see credit flows growing continuously, though not exceptionally, because in the meantime, and that's the other part of the answer to the crisis, many actions being taken to make the banking system more resilient. I would say that since the crisis, the whole regulatory and supervisory framework has been overhauled. And so now we can safely say that the banking system, and to some extent also the financial system at large, is much more resilient against future crisis, which by the way was quite important from a monetary policy viewpoint because counting on a stronger financial and banking system allowed an extraordinarily accommodative monetary policy to continue for much longer than it would have been possible 20 years ago. Very good. Let me turn to the next student on my list, which is Annabelle Rourke. Good morning President Draghi. My name is Annabelle Rourke. I'm a senior officer, maths and economics student, and I'm also an honorary member of the College Historical Society. It's such an honour to have you here today and to have been provided with such an excellent forum, directly to my question those. Firstly, a fundamental element of the Euro and indeed its success is that of the harmonisation of the Eurozone members and their response to economic shocks. This harmonisation however has been stunted by lack of labour flows from areas with high unemployment to areas with greater employment opportunities. Do you think the EU needs to move closer to becoming United States of Europe with its own more prominent European identity in order for the Euro area to be truly successful? Thoughts on language, culture and other social elements are also of interest. Thank you. In a sense I partly touched on this during my speech, but we know that the optimal currency area as concept, as was defined by Mandel many, many years ago, I think it was what, 50 years ago maybe, was calling for free movement of capital and free movement of labour. Now we are not there yet of course, but if you compare the current situation with 30, 40 years ago, significant progress would be made. There are barriers. There are language barriers, cultural barriers, policy barriers. Just think about a measure that would increase mobility, the portability of pensions. And in principle, at least it shouldn't be that difficult to construct a system, but there are political obstacles to moving that direction as well as on other directions in the labour market and so on. But still in spite of these barriers, the European construct has, as in a sense it gave us peace and probably the longest period of peace we ever had since the war, it has shown to be able to gradually, perhaps slowly, sometimes more, sometimes more fastly, overcome these barriers. And to some extent what we are seeing, in a sense I'm pretty confident that as we move forward, as the recovery continues strengthening, as employment will go down, and as curiosity of the young generation towards exploring job opportunities also beyond the borders of the countries will continue, will go up. And Europe provides exactly that framework where this exploration, this curiosity can be satisfied. Very good. Let me call on Rory McState. I'm honored to have you here as a student. Thank you very much. Much of the motivation from the last ECB Youth Dialogue was from innovation. Do you think that new technologies, specifically blockchain, have a role in monetary policy in the future? And if so, how do you think they'll change the monetary policy mechanisms? Thank you. Thank you. I have to confess I'm not an expert, but I can tell you that we at the ECB are looking into this and now have been looking into this for some time. One conclusion is that at this point in time the technology is not mature yet to become, to be considered in either central bank policymaking or in the payment system. So we have to look at what progress this technology will do in the future years. But let me also point out to another dimension of this. If I were asked what is the, in this realm of digitalization, what is the dominant theme today? It's cyber risk. And so we have, I would expect that any innovation, like the one you mentioned, any innovation will be screened from this viewpoint. How resilient is this? Or how much our exposure to cyber risk is going to go up because we embrace a new technology? Maybe I just have one line on that, because the history of money, of course, money, all central banks always try to protect the money by fighting fraud, fighting counterfeit activity and so on. So of course with new technologies, that spirit of money, every state, every system, has a unique state-backed money and the protecting the integrity of that is paramount. So let me turn to Stefano Minnetto. Morning, President Draghi. Thank you for being here and the insightful talk you gave before. I want to ask, given your personal, academic and professional life in the field of economics, where do you feel the teaching of the subject could be improved and if so, how? Thank you. Again, I must confess that I left university about 30 years ago. So if you ask me where I'm up to date with teaching, the type of teaching that's being done today, I should confess my ignorance. However, what I can sort of pick up from talking to my colleagues who are still students and still teaching or have been doing so until recently is that things have changed since the time I was in university and the emphasis on methods, mathematics, statistics, decrease in the early years of learning and much more attention is being given to, using simple words, understanding the world, understanding reality, the functioning of institutions, the interactions between agents and institutions. Some of you are more into finance, the working on markets. I think that's probably the change that's taking place and I think it's something that I would agree with. Thank you. Next on my list is Jonathan Rice. Morning, President Draghi. Welcome to Trinity and thank you very much for talking to us here today. My question, living in Ireland, we are painfully aware of volatility in house prices and while the central bank's macroprudential policies seem to have been somewhat effective, we are still seeing house price growth in double digits. So given the present prolonged period of low interest rates, I'm just wondering whether the potential for price bubbles is a growing concern of the governing council. Let me tell you that I get the very same question in each press conference I do in Germany. Which actually shows that house prices are going up, not only in Ireland, but in some other parts of the euro area. So we asked ourselves how systemic is this phenomenon because if it's local, then it's another, and I will come to this, then it's another issue. And the answer so far is it's not systemic. It's actually affecting certain large cities in certain countries. Then you ask yourself how far from historical averages are these valuations? And with few exceptions, I don't know about Ireland, but with few exceptions, we find out that house prices in these large cities have recovered from troughs where they were for several years. Then we asked ourselves how much is it due to low interest rates, to easy mortgages, to our monetary policy. And there the answer is that quite often factors like supply shortages, building permits, lack of social housing are the main causes of these increases in house prices. And the other question we're asking ourselves is because to become a bubble, you have to see, you have to observe an increase in prices, but also an increase in indebtness, in other words, in leverage. And how much this phenomenon of increasing house prices is accompanied by an increase in leverage? And the answer is not much. As a matter of fact, credit as I was saying before has recovered in the last four years now, but it's still pretty subdued if we compare it, not with the period immediately before the crisis because we are clearly having peaks that were unjustified, but even 10, 15 years ago, no, 15 years ago. And so historically is not excessive, what we would judge excessive. So if there are problems and where there are problems, they should be tackled with local measures, not through monetary policy. And so what are these measures? Some of them have to do with what we call macroprudential measures. So you have things like loan-to-value ratios for borrowers and other types of measures of the same kind. And there the competencies is shared between the ECB and the National Central Banks. And many countries, several countries amongst which Ireland have actually implemented these measures. And they've been, I think I said before, it's 2015, it started in 2016, it was reviewed. So I think the same is happening naturally in other countries as well in the Netherlands, I can remember, and I don't know about France as well. Thank you. Next on my list is Conor Parle. Thanks for coming today, Draghi. Draghi, so I just wanted to ask a question about how markets reacted quite sensitively to your speech in Cintra recently, and it kind of shows the importance of clear central bank communications and the further impacts they can have. So my question is, to what extent do you see four guidance and clear communications as a key component of modern central banks? Well, to some extent communication has become itself a tool of monetary policy. And it really goes with being independent. Independence of central banks is a big institutional change that took place in say the late 80s and through the 90s. Of course, in Germany, the central bank has always been independent. It's enshrined in the constitution. But in most other countries, central banks were not independent. So they became independent, and with independence you have to have accountability. In other words, central banks are independent within a mandate. We have a mandate of price stability. The Federal Reserve have a dual mandate, price stability and full employment. And then the legislators would ask ourselves, how well are you complying with your mandate? And this is one part of accountability. The other part is vis-à-vis the public opinion at large. So communication becomes a very important element of how we comply with our mandate. And together with communication, the next step is transparency. Communication has to be transparent. Give you an idea of how things have changed. Until 1994, the Federal Reserve would change its interest rates without any communication to markets. So markets would have to infer from the fact that things were changing actually in front of their screens that the Fed had changed the interest rates. Now this sounds unthinkable today. And so this is the new world. And so the new instruments like forward guidance, for example, forward guidance is essentially based on communication. And that's one of the reasons why credibility is so important. Credibility means that markets, that the rest of the economic agents at large believe that things are going to go like you are saying they will. And therefore they behave accordingly. And that's why communication is important, but also continuous compliance with your mandate and especially independence. If a central bank is being viewed as independent is also viewed as credible. Or at least is one of the necessary conditions for credibility. If a central bank is viewed as non-independent then is certainly viewed as non-credible. And therefore market expectations will not react according to the monetary policy indications we give. So for the final question let me turn to Townsend Greenbarker. Good morning Mr Draghi. Many of us here have just graduated or are in our final year studying economics here at Trinity. I wanted to ask is there any advice you would like to give to us students who are at the very start of our career in economics? And also what words of wisdom would you have liked to have known when you were at the very start of your career Mr Draghi? That's a very difficult question. It's... Well the advice I would give you is just stay curious. Stay curious. Think...learn from the world as I was... when I was asked about how teaching should be... should change. I am only saying what I understand now the emphasis is more on learning from experience from the world, from institutions and stay curious. Curiosity is what drives you to be... to explore job opportunities to explore different environments and also to be creative. So that's the advice I would feel like giving you. And never lose your courage of course. Very good. I think that's been a very interesting exchange. With all due respect to the journalists in the room it's great to have questions from students as opposed to... they're very important to have the media to do in communicating ECB policies. Let me turn the floor back to John O'Hagan. So I'm going to invite Con McCarrick the president of the Phil who's going to make a presentation to Mr Draghi. I want to tell you there is a connection between the Phil and economics. Maybe five, six years ago the Phil and the Hiss, these are two big debating societies, compete fiercely every year to host the student economic review debates and in Macomb's term it's against Oxford or Cambridge and in Hillary's term it's against Yale or Harvard. The Phil people won't like to hear me saying this in this competition to get these debates but the battle up to date has been pretty equal. So Con. Good morning. I'd like to welcome you all to the University Philosophical Society here in Trinity College and my name is Con McCarrick and I'm president of the society. So on behalf of the society I'm President and Provost Patrick Prendergas and Trinity College Dublin thank you all for joining us here this morning to welcome the society's newest recipient of the Goa Medal of Honorary Patronage, Mario Draghi. Every found in 1683 the world's most preeminent thinkers, doers and change makers have addressed the society. Every year the council and members of Phil elect a number of exceptional individuals to the honour of honorary patronage in recognition of their outstanding and significant contributions to their given fields. We are delighted to welcome the president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi to the ranks of our honorary patrons in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the field of economics. Recent recipients of this award include Vice President Joe Biden, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Martin Scorsese. Mr Draghi has served as president of the ECB since 2011. His appointment to this prestigious position was the culmination of a hugely successful academic and professional career. After earning a PhD in economics in 1935, he was a professor at the University of Florence and a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the JFK School of Government at Harvard University. He has served as Italian Executive Director at the World Bank and as a General Director of the Italian Treasury. Perhaps most famously he has served as Vice Chairman and Managing Director at Goa Man Sachs International. In 2005, Draghi became the Governor of the Bank of Italy and finally in 2011 he took his place as President of the European Central Bank. Mr Draghi was listed as the eighth most powerful person in the world by Forbes in 2014 and ranks as the world's second-greatest leader by Fortune in 2015. However, we're sure that the acceptance of the failed Goa Medal will be his greatest honor today. So without any further ado I invite you to please welcome our society's newest Goa Medalist, Mr Mario Draghi. Thank you very much. I'm especially honored to receive this this medal. You told some of the recipients but there are many others really and so I'm especially honored to be in this list. Thank you so much. It's really moving. Thank you.