Professor John McHale:

Yes, at an aggregate level. We are looking beyond 2015, and something we do in this report is look at the expenditure projections to 2018. A quite startling figure can be seen if we look at non-interest spending over the period 2013 to 2018. It is projected to fall by eight percentage points of GDP, which is a very significant fall.

As we look over the period 2016 to 2018, in money terms non-interest spending is being held constant but the presumption is that we will have growth in the economy. Therefore, spending will be shrinking as a share in the economy. It will also be a time of significant demographic pressures and other demand in cost pressures on spending. Therefore, we need to be aware that even though the worst of the fiscal adjustment should be over in 2015, it will still be quite a difficult period after that, particularly given those underlying spending pressures. Care would need to be taken in reducing aggregate revenue raising capacity in that situation, but we are not providing advice about particular taxes. That is very much a decision for Government.

The other aspect of that we note in the report is the importance of the upcoming comprehensive review of expenditure. Given those very strong underlying spending pressures, it would be important to plan expenditure very carefully to identify areas where spending can be restrained in a way that does least damage to public services and to people relying on social payments. It is a combination of not undermining that revenue raising capacity and also very carefully planning expenditure over the next number of years.