Professor John McHale:

I do not have very much to say on that. Returning to my previous response to Deputy Eamon Ryan, the great advantage of this new process is that we are getting away from the big bang budget approach where we did not know anything until the Budget Statement was made. I think the whole period should be looked at. Getting documents in advance of publication is less important, particularly if there is a very short time advantage as Deputy Burton described in the case of the summer economic statement; what really matters is the content of the documents themselves given that one has a period of time to apply scrutiny. There are two issues, timing and content. I would think that ultimately it is the content that matters, even if one does not have a particular advantage in terms of early access to the documents.