Professor John McHale:

There could be. They will be carried out under difference assumptions and rules. The European Central Bank exercise will include a stress test. The argument for releasing the information now is countered by opposing arguments. The Central Bank is closest to that process so I would not second-guess its decision. I do not think there is room for tax cuts or expenditure increases in budget 2015. As I noted in my statement the council believes that the current plans for €2 billion in additional adjustments should be followed through. If growth comes out as anticipated, we should be okay with an effectively neutral budget in 2016 without the need for additional measures. In chapter four of our report we have looked forward in time to 2019 in order to gauge the room for expansionary measures that will ensure full compliance with all fiscal rules. We ran scenarios for doing the minimum consolidation necessary in order to achieve all the fiscal rules and to see what level of both nominal and real expansion - which could be split between tax cuts and expenditure increases - would be possible. We see limited room, post-2016. There will be greater room for nominal adjustments and less room when taking into account that there is likely to be inflation occurring over that period as a result of the real impact of those expenditure and tax changes.

To answer the Deputy's question, we really do not see scope in the next year or two but if growth projections pan out as currently anticipated, there could well be scope after 2016.

On the question about the advice given by the council, the frequent comment is that we are being ignored. However, it should be noted that we have been broadly supportive of the Government's fiscal strategy which has succeeded in stabilising the public finances and restoring the borrowing capacity of the State. The disagreements have come more on the fine tuning of fiscal policy which will include this decision of whether to do €3.1 billion or €2.5 billion. The fine tuning involves balancing acts. We can understand that the Government might make a different balancing of the factors than we did. The Government takes our analysis on board when making a decision but when it comes to those fine tuning decisions, if the Government does not follow exactly our analysis, we do not consider that this means it is ignoring our advice. There is a key phrase in the fiscal responsibility Act which states the council must assess if the Government's overall fiscal stance is conducive to prudent economic and budgetary management.

In each of our reports we have found that this test was met. If we were to find that this criterion was not satisfied - that we considered the Government to be following an imprudent policy - and if our view were ignored at that point, then that would be a much more serious issue. It is important to distinguish between the levels of advice or criticism that we may give. Although we are called the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, we also have an important watchdog role. Other key components of our mandate include the endorsement function itself and our assessment of compliance, particularly in respect of the budgetary rule set out in the Fiscal Responsibility Act. We have been able, once again, to endorse the macroeconomic forecasts in this round. In other words, we have assessed that the Government is in compliance with the budgetary rule. As I said, if we were to assess otherwise and were that finding to be ignored, there would be a much more serious issue.