Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is it in a nutshell. We put forward our stability programme in April and the figure of €2 billion. At the time the best information at my disposal was that it would require an adjustment of €2 billion to get under the 3% deficit figure by 2015. There are a lot of moving parts as the year passes. I could not give an exact figure, but I am fairly confident in saying it will now take less than that figure to achieve a deficit of 3% because a lot of matters have been moving in the right direction. Some have been moving in the wrong direction also. However, on balance, there are more pluses than minuses in terms of the budgetary position in the first five months of the year. The Deputy will recall that while our target deficit for 2014 was 5.1%, we decided to go a little lower and built a budget on the expectation of a deficit of 4.8%. With the evidence for the first five months of the year, it seems we will come in somewhat lower than that figure, but I am not in a position to say by how much. The Deputy will be aware of the factors involved. Tax receipts are running significantly ahead of budget; expenditure is under control and there are other items in terms of the general fiscal position that are favourable.