Mr. Diarmaid Smyth:

A couple of points were made on the transparency of the Department of Finance and Exchequer returns. It is the council's job to raise awareness about these matters. The way the Department of Finance does its forecasting and presents its figures is complex and is a bit of a black box. It is part of the council's job to raise awareness. For example, in the report the council went to great lengths to explain how the Department makes short-term and medium-term forecasts. To our knowledge that process has not been documented in Ireland before. Obviously we examine the accuracy of its forecasts and check for errors. We knew that the budget was overly pessimistic about the outlook for last year and the error was about 0.5% of GDP.

Exchequer returns evolve. The Deputy may have said that they were archaic but the Government has made progress. Exchequer returns now have an information note attached every month to describe the main developments. The Department also publishes tax profiles and explains how taxes are relative to profiles. It has done the same for expenditure in the past. There have been improvements. It also an analytical presentation on Exchequer returns. That is a great advance. It shows things like PRSI receipts, appropriations-in-aid, non-tax revenues and a lot more details. More information is being provided on the Exchequer.

There is one big positive about the Exchequer numbers. They are released very quickly and are usually published on the second working day following the end of the month. As members will know, there is a time lag when it comes to a lot of data in Ireland. In defence of the Department, its information is timely.

A great advance was made this week. The Central Statistics Office published Government statistics that showed a lot of information on the financial and fixed assets of the Government, measures of gross debt and net debt. That is a major advance and the council will examine the data in more detail in future reports.