Mr. Michael Tutty:

I thought we were doing it in our presentation today. We see ourselves interacting with the committee, twice a year now, and potentially three or four times per year. As Professor McHale outlined at the beginning, our role comes after certain events rather than before them. We are more limited in what we can do for the committee before the stability programme update, SPU, comes out or immediately before the budget. The one area where we could, perhaps, get more involved is our pre-budget statement, if it can be brought forward to an earlier time than mid-September, which is when it comes out and which is late in terms of the committee's deliberations on what should be in the budget.

We need inputs from the Department and the Government for our work. We need to know what their projections and plans are and we can then assess them in terms of how they fit with the fiscal rules and what flexibility is there. The Departments of Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform should supply the committee with the basic information for its deliberations. We should also receive this input for our deliberations, and we can then help the committee to comment on or interpret them.

This is where the parliamentary budget office comes in. In some of the proposals at the time of the election there was a suggestion that IFAC might become the parliamentary budget office. We did not see it as being a suitable role for us and the Parliament has gone down a different road in terms of establishing a separate parliamentary budget office. The committee should look to the parliamentary budget office to see how it can help the committee better. The parliamentary budget office will be on site here, dedicated to looking after the interests of all the Deputies and Senators. Our input will come at specific times. We cannot play the role of holding the members' hands throughout the year and helping them with every step along the way. The parliamentary budget office should be developed to play this role.