Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Mr. McCarthy can sense the frustration from our point of view, although I can only speak for myself. The presentation is entitled, Economic Outlook Underpinning Budget 2014. We are having this discussion in the context of the budget which will be announced next week and Mr. McCarthy is giving us all of the detailed assumptions underpinning his budgetary model, but he is not prepared to tell us anything at all about what it means because he claims this is only part of the picture. I do not accept that he cannot tell us what the proposed adjustment - €2 billion on the spending side and €1.1 billion on the tax side - means on the fiscal side. I do not accept that he cannot tell us this.