Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This is my final question. We have talked a lot about the expenditure benchmark but there is also another rule that governs us on the fiscal rules. That is the structural improvement rule that requires us to have a structural improvement rate of 0.6%. The latest projections by the Department that were published before the summer showed that we were not actually going to meet that target. The Government made the argument at the time because we were going to hit 0.4%, which would have meant that we would be okay. Given the revisions of the CSO, we are not going to meet that target at all. There may be no structural improvement. There is an argument put forward that there will be a blind eye turned to this by the Commission, despite the fact that we were told that this was actually the primary target as opposed to the expenditure benchmark. I would like to hear Dr. McDonnell's thoughts on some of that.