Professor John McHale:

I am not too sure that we will be winners no matter what happens. There are variations in the level of the criticism we are making. There is a requirement in the Fiscal Responsibility Act to the effect that we must assess whether the Government's policy is conducive to economic and budgetary management. We have concluded in each of our reports that this is the case. The Deputy referred to the endorsement function, which only relates to the macroeconomic forecasts which underlie the budget and the stability programme. Recognising the uncertainty that exists around any set of forecasts, we have been in a position to endorse those to which I refer. It is important that we are in a position whereby we can give our best opinion of, for example, what should be the fiscal stance. We should also be in a position to be able to increase the level of criticism if the deviation from what we think should be the appropriate fiscal stance becomes larger. This might be referred to as hedging our bets, but it is important that we do not have just one volume in terms of our criticism. If we feel that deviation is becoming larger, we will increase the volume of our criticism.