Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to pick up on an issue we touched on a number of times when the council appeared before the committee on previous occasions, namely, the difference between it and the Department of Finance. Mr. Tutty answered some of the questions. I want to go deeper into the figures he provided. He mentioned that €4.1 billion is what the council believes would need to be factored into the fiscal space to deal with inflationary pressures. Can Professor McHale inform the committee whether inflationary pressures on social welfare and pension payments and public service wages are included as part of the analysis, along with the inflationary pressures in regard to the non-wage elements of our expenditure on health and other areas? Is the council able to strip away those two components?