Professor John McHale:

The Deputy's criticism is valid regarding our previous report. It would not have made sense to speak about it in this report, given the revisions. In the summer economic statement the projected improvement in the structural balance for this year was 0.5%. It was required to be 0.6%. It is possibly something we should be screaming about, if we thought even 0.5% was optimistic. However, we looked very closely at the revenue forecasts and thought they were on the conservative side. We saw it as quite likely that revenue would come in higher than projected at that point.

If there was something about which we were concerned, we still have sharp teeth and are willing to use them but at the same time, there is no point in picking battles about a minor issue.

There is an area on which I would agree with the Deputy. It concerned us that the Government still set out targets that were not meeting the rules. It was a very small issue, and we did not make a big deal of it, but we believed it thought it would make it because it probably knew that its own revenue forecasts were quite conservative. We would like to see forecasts set out that at least show that the plan is to meet the rules.