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

For the first five months of the year, the tax take is above profile by €446 million and the swings and roundabouts on the expenditure side at least cancel each other out. Anecdotal evidence suggests economic growth is accelerating. Job creation is moving faster than we calculated at budget time. Because interest rates on our debt are lower than we estimated at budget time, the NTMA will have unanticipated savings, so there is a margin there. The Central Bank may make excess profits that were not signalled at budget time, again because things are going right. Examining a series of factors that affect budget positions, many of them are positive, and if it continues for the rest of the year, our position will have improved significantly.

There are also negatives. Although it is an open secret that there is an overrun on health expenditure, it is more than compensated for by the underspend due to additional people returning to work. Another piece of the jigsaw people do not immediately see is that while the tax flow comes to the Exchequer, the flow of PRSI receipts from the extra people at work goes to the Department of Social Protection. Therefore, as well as having lower expenditure because fewer people are on the live register, the Department of Social Protection has an additional inflow of money from PRSI receipts. Another down side is that when the troubles in Ukraine developed, our agency that examines strategic energy reserves wisely got into commitments on the spot market. These liabilities affect the budgetary position. Although there are swings and roundabouts, if the swings are the positives, there are more of them than roundabouts, but we are only five months into the year.