Professor David Farrell:

There have been moves which are potentially interesting, such as the establishment of the fiscal advisory council, which is a good example of something that down the road might develop into quite an important stage in the budgetary process. As I stated in my remarks, it would be more important to see the establishment of an agency, perhaps a version of it, that is vested within the Oireachtas and, therefore, answerable directly to it and working for it, which is something we see in many of the newer democracies in central and eastern Europe.