David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our witnesses. On the measurement of economic activity and gross domestic product, GDP, as the previous speaker said we are in a bit of a mess in that regard. The Central Statistics Office is speaking about using two sets of figures. I do not believe there is anything wrong with giving us the genuine debt and the real economic activity figures. It is not legal, however. EUROSTAT accepts certain measurements can be used, meaning we can have different sets of figures. How helpful are these, however? Last week, the chief economist from the Central Bank told the committee about a uniquely Irish bespoke set of economic indicators which would strip out aircraft leasing and intangibles and that would be the way to measure GDP. We can then go to Europe and elsewhere to sell this as a new way of measurement.

How realistic is that, particularly given the headline figures that went around the world as a consequence of the distorted figures? It seems that we are blaming the fire alarm for the fire rather than addressing the fire in the first place. Part of the explanation is that we have a restructuring of company assets and we had capital flows as a consequence of the ending of the double Irish, which is to be phased out by 2020. Will that continue for the next number of years? Will we see more restructuring and capital flows and will this further distort the figures? This is a real problem for us because that is how we measure and apply the fiscal rules such as debt to GDP so we need to have a real hard look at it. We can come up with all sorts of different figures. The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council can have its figures, the CSO can have a different set of figures and the Central Bank can have its view but I am concerned about, and we should be concerned about, how they are interpreted in Europe and internationally and how they apply to the actual fiscal rules and the budgetary process. What is the witnesses' response to how we deal with that mess?