Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the visitors. Their role is valuable because we have a clientelist political system and massive rent seeking up and down the Exchequer - the Niskanen bureaucracy. Some voice telling us that we have to balance the books on the odd occasion is valuable because the forces that led us over a cliff in 2008 have not gone away. As a Member of the Parliament in the three years since 2011, I believe we have not reformed enough of the machinery.

There are 100 sections in the Finance Bill but there is not an ounce of economic analysis in terms of who benefits, the effect it will have, the income distribution consequences and so on. As I understand the term fiscal, it should refer to both the way we implement the tax system in this document rather than just the macro aggregates with which the witnesses deal. There are 100 measures, some of which seem strange. One of them proposes to abolish a €0.5 million income limit. Another is that capital allowances previously disallowed can now be used and so on. In economic terms there is an immense amount of analysed activity taking place and I am sure much of it is counter-productive. There is a ceiling of €0.5 million in the special assignee relief programme. I do not know whether any cost-benefit analysis was done of that, who lobbied hardest and so on.

The Wright report shows the Department of Finance to be seriously deficient in economic expertise, with 93% of staff not qualified in economics at master's level. In Ottawa, from where Mr. Wright came, 60% of similar staff were qualified. The economic analysis Professor McHale and his colleagues bring is very important. However, I do not know whether those deficiencies in the Department of Finance have been rectified yet.

People have referred to the macro-economic aggregates but a deeper analysis needs to be done. The more macro-economic good news that is published, the more people will be marching outside these Houses because they have not seen the effects of that. What instruments would realise the kind of growth that would percolate down? The employment numbers are good but there is not a feel-good factor in the country.

For example, perhaps the structure of the universal social charge, USC, is a possibility. I have never heard of a tax that gives one an exemption of €12,000 and change but then, when one goes over €12,000, the entire income below €12,000 is brought into the tax base. A tax-free allowance used to mean just that, a tax-free allowance and it is a strange kind of tax. I acknowledge we needed the money at the time we did it. I hope the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council will extend its role to consider all the State's economic policies because its input is badly needed. I made the point in the Seanad today that the debate on the Finance Bill was like one from 40 years ago, in that none of the developments in economics since then appear to have influenced the budgetary process at all. This is an important subject and we lost out seriously between 2008 and 2011 by not having the expertise at this committee which today's witnesses possess. More interventions and statements made by them will only improve the quality of decision-making, which I would welcome.