Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are three different reports into the crisis in Ireland and in a number of the reports, and particularly in the Wright report if I recall it correctly, there’s a reference to the fact that within Government Departments that there wasn’t a welcome for people putting an opposite view to whatever the convention and wisdom was and I think the same would have happened across Europe. And the idea of independent fiscal councils was developed in Europe and was part of the Irish programme. And the motivation, one of the motivations for it, was that you would have a statutory body operating under law, empowered to give a contrarian view of policy, economic and fiscal policy. That’s where I was coming from. On the specific remit it got then, from my point of view, its primary remit is to oversee the forecasts made by the Department of Finance and, in overseeing those forecasts, to agree those forecast, if they do agree with them. And then they have an advisory role as well, where they make public comment from time to time, and I think they do pre-budget statements and post-budget statements. And a number of the members of the council, and particularly the chairman, quite frequently give media interviews. And in the media interview, they give an independent view of the economy and, as part of the independent view, they state clearly whether they agree or disagree with Government policy.