 Thank you so much, and thank you, Ambassador Forbes, Ambassador, Mexican Ambassador, for joining us today. Great pleasure to be back at the Institute and speak about our vision of economic progress shared by all. Ireland will soon celebrate an important centenary, 100 years since the proclamation of the Irish Republic in 1916, which declared, I quote, to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally. Now, this is a crucial mandate for equality, which is the focus of what I'd like to talk about today, not only in Ireland, but in practically all democracies, certainly in all OECD countries. Unfortunately, this is an objective that we have failed to achieve. During the past 50 years, our countries have created remarkable levels of growth, remarkable levels of wealth, remarkable levels of progress. But the benefits have not been evenly distributed. The current crisis has exposed the greed and the privileges of a happy few, but also the great vulnerability of the many. We're heading into the sixth year of the economic crisis. We're fortunately seeing important signs of improvement in a growing number of countries. Some emerging economies are facing new headwinds, but their average growth rate is still more than quadruples that of the developed countries. Yes, we were recently in St. Petersburg in the G20 summit, and of course, where they said, oh, well, we're very worried about the deceleration of the Chinese economy. I said, yes, poor guys, they're only growing at 7.6%. It's a little difficult to say to, you know, you can whip on my shoulder here, because we've gotten used to these very high numbers and to them being, well, locomotives of growth. But they are going through a rough patch for the first time. I think China kind of starts on the side a little bit, but if you look at India, if you look at Brazil, if you look at South Africa, if you look at Mexico, many of the large emerging really are going, for the first time, coming down in terms of the growth. Well, now some of the larger economies, developed economies are pointing upwards. So the lines are crossing for the first time. Now, the problem, however, is that regardless of whether you're in the upswing or in the downswing, all the countries are facing daunting social challenges and problems have to do with the equality in the societies. The global employment crisis is a very dramatic, a bit crude, but very illustrative example. Worldwide, there are more than 200 million people out of work. In OECD countries alone, the number is about 48, almost, you know, which 48 you say, so what, you know, 48 million? Is that high or low or whatever good, bad? Well, it's 15 million more than before the crisis and we haven't caught up. In Spain and Greece, the unemployment rate exceeds 25%, and although the rate in Ireland is now under 14%, it's still three times the pre-crisis level and clearly, unacceptably high. The average for the OECD is about eight, so the fact that Ireland is at 13.8% or something like that, now low 14, still is about 15%, you know, more than 15% higher, so. Now, the impact of the crisis also has hit some groups harder than others and it has hit young people the hard-dest. Youth unemployment rates are alarming levels in many countries, around 63% in Greece, 56% in Spain, 30% to 40% in Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, and at 28.6% in last July, youth unemployment in Ireland remains around twice the overall rate. So we said that you are at about 14% average when you're talking about youth unemployment, double, and I have to say the average in the OECD of youth unemployment is about 16, the average unemployment is eight, double for the youth, 16 in the case of Ireland, you have 14 for the average and 28 for the youth. So you can see these are large numbers, you know, 12 percentage points above the OECD average. This is why initiatives like the European Union's youth guarantee adopted earlier this year during the Irish presidency of the European Council, by the way, a very, very successful European presidency, it's almost a given that the happiest moment is when you're designated to be and the second happiest moment is when the six-month period expires, you know, and everybody goes and takes a long vacation because there are about 2,000 meetings throughout the six-month period or something like that. But I also have to say that not only the youth guarantee, it's sort of the question of budget, question of the launch of the TTIP, the negotiations with the United States, a number of very, very meaningful, actually flagship successes that were achieved by the Irish presidency. So a good job and congratulations. Then there's also, of course, after the youth guarantee was proposed, each country now has to come up with its own version of the youth guarantee because not everybody is in the same situation. The ECD is currently working closely with the Department of Social Protection with Madame Burton, we just left her a moment ago, to develop a national action plan to implement it and thereby guarantee that every young person is offered a job and a further education or work-focused training that's an alternative to a job soon after leaving education or after becoming unemployed. The conventional number is being used for months. The longest delay is with the four months to either get a new job or get into training. Actually, we're going to sign tomorrow with the formalities. Structural reforms to boost growth and create jobs are another important policy lever. These policies need to be chosen carefully. In the context of fiscal consolidation but also because there's particularly weak demand in the economy. When you're talking about structural reforms to boost growth and create jobs one has to be mindful of the balances here, the equilibria. These are exactly the kinds of issues we deal with in the 2013 OECD Economic Survey of Ireland. Does anybody have a copy that we can just show it? Today, we launched the Economic Survey of Ireland and basically this is focusing on jobs. Well, it's focusing on every aspect of the economy but basically it says we have a special chapter on jobs and then tomorrow I was saying tomorrow we're going to be launching local job creation, how employment and training agencies can help and then there's going to be the signing of an agreement about how to define or design the Irish version of the youth guarantee. Now we're going to be working the Irish Government, the OECD on this. So now, thank you. We recommend in the survey, for example, focus the limited fiscal resources on policies which improve employability, not necessarily in creating a job because then you never stop. The governments cannot be creating the jobs directly but upscaling the skills and improving the employability. The greater evaluation of labour market programs we're not only doing this in the case of Irish, we're also doing in the case of Spain. We were asked by the Spanish government to make an appraisal of the reform program on the labour markets. The Italian government also asked us, we're also working with Korea, with Norway and some others. We also stress that priority should be given to the engagement with long-term job seekers and an increase in the number of case workers supporting them through internal redeployment, really more personal support to the people who are seeking jobs and who are out of jobs. We're also launching a report, this one that I said, Local Job Creation, How Employment and Training Agencies Can Help that explores the scope for the bottom-up job creation led by some local authorities that of course would have to be reformed in order to be able to do this job. It addresses, among others, the crucial issue of mismatches between the supply and the demands of skills. One often listens to this paradox of the entrepreneurs who are saying that they can't find the talent and there you have millions of people unemployed. Obviously there's a mismatch there. Those currently unemployed in Ireland require support and retraining but they do not drift into social exclusion and that they are ready to apply for jobs as the recovery strengthens. So from now on, all our policies have to be carefully tailored. They have to be synchronized to promote social inclusion. We cannot go back to the policies and frameworks that produced such high levels of inequality. Now, in OECD economies, the gap between the rich and the poor has always been important but the problem is that it has widened in the last three decades. According to our latest study on inequality, three years ago, actually five years ago, we put one out that was called growing unequal question mark. We've now removed the question mark because unfortunately the numbers suggest absolutely yes, growing unequal. So it's called divided we stand. Why inequality keeps rising? This is the subtitle. Why inequality keeps rising. It says that the average income of the richest 10% of the population in the OECD countries is more than nine times the income of the poorest, 10%. Nine to one. Again, is this good, bad, small, short, fat, whatever, what is it? The ratio, unfortunately, was around seven times a generation ago, 25 years ago. So we're clearly moving in the wrong direction and the problem is we're moving pretty fast too. The speed is accelerating. Now for some countries like Chile, my own country, Mexico, this ratio is 27 times. In Brazil it's 50 to one. South Africa, 100 to one. In Ireland as a crisis struck, your ratio increased from 6.4 to 9.1. Actually, in a year, it was very devastating. It was very, very, it really hit hard here. It went to 9.1, which is the average. But it was way below the average until very recently. Irish inequality is now around the EU average and has been in gentle decline in more recent years, but the long-term trajectory is of concern. So how did we become so unequal? Well, the factors fueling inequalities are very diverse and they're complex, but the profound transformations that societies have undergone in recent years through globalization and technological innovations have caught many people unprepared to reap the benefits. While regulatory reforms have spurred growth, tax and benefits reforms have hampered an equitable sharing of the wages. The values of inequality go beyond income. Today, employment in non-standard work arrangements, non-standard work arrangements is obviously a very elegant way of putting it. This is part-time, temporary work. It now represents about 40% of total employment in the OECD. We're talking about the OECD, which is most prosperous, most advanced, most legislated, most regulated countries in the world. 40% of the job market is part-time, temporary work, et cetera. Informal jobs are widespread in emerging and developing countries, which puts workers, especially those holding what we call the 3D jobs. This is not unfortunately three-dimensional. It's dirty, dangerous and demeaning. At a serious disadvantage, differences in education and health also play a huge role. The problem is the system that we have in place now tends to either perpetuate or perhaps even accelerate these differences for those that are at a disadvantage. So the system is not now creating a convergence. It's creating actually a divergence. The perpetuation of inequalities is not only a moral issue, ethical issue. It is also a very serious economic hindrance. It's a hindrance for economic growth because these fixed disparities have become an obstacle to improve productivity, to improve competitiveness and widespread innovation. You have to understand, in Japan, in the United States, or kind of like Turkey or Italy, 40% of the workers are either informal or short-term. They have no loyalty to the company. The company has no interest in their training. By definition, they are going to be maybe fired in the next round, in the next three months, the next two months or whatever. Or they are always susceptible to be fired even if they're being rolled over all the time. Basically, they are condemned to be low productivity workers because they're never going to be given the tools to improve their productivity and to be more competitive and more productive for the company itself. So there's this arms length between the company and the worker, which is devastating for both. The worker doesn't get trained, doesn't get improved in his capacity, doesn't get employability. The company, of course, gets a bad result. So how can we address this global challenge? Well, the most powerful mechanism for reducing income inequality is, of course, to create more and better jobs. This is kind of obvious. But this has to be complemented with investments in high quality education to promote the developments of the skills that are driving innovation and economic growth. Tax policy reform should also be part of the equation to ensure that the tax system is progressive while minimizing distortions. This is important not only for economic and social reasons, but also to restore public trust in the tax system as a social equalizer. The public is today absolutely cynical about the capacity of governments to address their problems. This question of the tax area is one of the reasons. The richer don't pay, the larger companies don't pay, so the burden is on small and medium enterprises and the middle class. And, of course, this feeds this cynicism, this lack of trust. Let me give you one example. Under the current tax regime, multinational enterprises are often able to shift their profits out of the countries where they are earned. This results in very low taxes or sometimes even what we call double non-taxation. We refer to this as base erosion and profit shifting, BEPS. Please keep this in your mind. You're going to be listening a lot about BEPS in the next few months, in the next few years. Actually, at this week's G20 summit, leaders endorsed the OECD action plan for BEPS, base erosion and profit shifting or rather to fight base erosion and profit shifting. And we're grateful for the ongoing support from the Irish authorities in this area. Your prime minister actually since June when we were together at Loch Erne in Northern Ireland in the G8 meeting that was hosted by Mr Cameron, he said, before anybody tells me, I will tell you, we're going to be working on this initiative, we're going to be joining the initiative and we're going to be helping to put out the results of the initiative. Which, by the way, is not meant to equalize taxes in every country. It's a question of how not to use kind of bigger-dye-neighbor mechanisms in that same time. If a company does not operate in a particular jurisdiction, the question is how to avoid that jurisdiction can help that company that doesn't operate there in exchange for a few fees for lawyers or whatever to actually avoid paying taxes in the jurisdiction where it actually operates or in the jurisdiction where it actually resides The OECD is also helping countries reduce inequalities through new and innovative tools. We have something called New Approaches to Economic Challenges, which explores new economic theories, weights that combine strong growth with a better distribution of earnings. And also an initiative called Inclusive Growth Initiative which aims to renovate the concept of growth to go beyond income and encompass different aspects. You know, aspects of life that play a critical role in the well-being of our people and even the well-being of our planet. Ladies and gentlemen, I quote, we are not simply a credit rating or an economy, but a history and a culture, a human population rather than a statistical phenomenon. These words by Seamus Heaney are a dire reminder of where we've gone wrong. But also of where we want to go, in which direction we ought to take. As our countries struggle to exit the crisis and implement reforms to build more resilient economies, we have a unique opportunity to tackle the inequalities and create fair and inclusive societies. We must achieve these objectives. At the OECD, we have made this our battle. I have made this my battle and the battle of my team. At the OECD secretariat we stand ready to help you. We stand ready to help your leaders to design better policies for more inclusive growth. It's not so difficult. It's not rocket science. It's about better policies for better lives. Thank you.