Professor John McHale:

In terms of the core advice, I would say we do not believe that to be the case. One point that sometimes becomes lost in the debate is the fact that we have supported the broad thrust of the policy that is currently being pursued and also that which was pursued by the previous Government immediately post-crisis. It is important to say that. When we get into matters of detail, it is clear that there have been differences. We are not naive enough to think that everything we recommend will be followed. On the one hand, we look at matters purely from the point of view of economics while, on the other, we realise that there is a need to find a balance in respect of different factors, both political and economic, when decisions are made. In addition, the Government may reach judgments which are different from ours on the economics involved. There have been important cases in which we felt we had influenced the Government's approach. In the Dáil debate following the pre-budget statement - at which the Deputy was in attendance - the Minister explicitly said that the target for the deficit in 2015 was set at 2.7% - partly in response to our report - in order to have some margin of safety around the requirement to get the deficit below 3%. That is a very concrete instance in which our advice was at least partially taken on board. Of course, we recommended that the Government should go further and set a bigger target. However, it does seem that our advice had an impact on the decisions taken by the Government.

The point about our role in advising the Government and providing our analyses to the Oireachtas and the public is an important one. We are of the view that we are having a significant impact on the public debate. There clearly is interest in our reports from the Oireachtas and there is also a very substantial public and media interest in them. To that extent, we think we are having a very significant impact on the overall discussion in respect of fiscal policy.