Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 19 June 2014
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform
Fiscal Assessment Report 2014: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council
2:35 pm
Mr. Sebastian Barnes:
If I may come in on this point, one way of looking at the question is that if everything works out like the Department of Finance forecasts state, we will get to the medium-term objective, MTO, in 2018. However, there are many risks around that. For example, if one looks at the Department of Finance's forecasts for GDP, they are higher than those of the Commission or the IMF. While we have endorsed them, we did say they were at the optimistic end of the range that we would consider for endorsement. It may well be that things do not turn out like the Department of Finance assumes and then it will be much more difficult to meet this 2018 target.
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