Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The rationale for establishing the Committee on Budgetary Oversight is to have a greater understanding, not just by ourselves as parliamentarians and therefore allowing for better decision-making but also a greater understanding by the public. One of the biggest challenges is to question a Department with regard to what ELS is and how it is calculated. We were told in this committee up until a week before the budget was announced that it would stay within the parameters of what was in the summer economic statement, and the ELS was at, I think, €3.2 billion. We know wage components and different costs make that up. On budget day, it was reduced by €500 million. There is no rationale as to why that happened bar, I presume, that they needed the €500 million somewhere else. There is a rule of thumb within the Department that ELS is calculated as a percentage of core expenditure. Could or would the ESRI look at the health expenditure and how ELS is calculated? If there is no transparency in relation to it, then there are questions about what to do. Do we allow Departments to go over budget and fill it with Supplementary Estimates each year?

The other issue I wish to chat about before I go into the presentation is that I thought the ESRI did an excellent report, and quite a shocking report to tell the truth, entitled Interest Rate Snapback and the Impacts on the Irish Economy. I am not sure if the witnesses are familiar with it. It was published in August and laid out a range of scenarios, which included the interest rate shock of the past year and more. It projected that dwelling completions could fall between 8% and 10% in 2024 compared with the baseline scenario. Is the ESRI holding firm to that? Does it have any view of where we are in terms of dwelling completions in 2024? I say that in the context of the budget not providing any additional capital above what was already planned for new housing.