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

I presume their opening position was our stability programme published in April. Given that we always publish the monthly revenue flows and returns, that data would also have been available to them.

I am not quite sure what they took into account when they were doing their assessment and they would go into the process of doing a report. Some of what I am telling the committee is fact such as the Revenue figures for the first five months of the year but some is what is called "soft data" and they would not have been in possession of some of that, about which I am giving the committee an indication.