Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the witnesses for their time today. I will start with one observation. The macro numbers are all over the place. It would be very useful to have a comparative analysis with per capitaas the denominator. We use GDP, GNP or hybrids or whatever it is, but per capitaor purchasing power parity, PPP, adjusted per capita, where that is more appropriate, would be very useful because our public debt levels are much scarier than the graphs that are being used show. There is a level of public investment and infrastructure investment. We have graphs here from some advisers to the committee which show it is one of the lowest in the OECD but that is using GDP as a denominator. When per capitais used as the denominator, I imagine it is even worse. My sense is that we are more of an outlier than the figures show. That is just an observation. It would be very useful to have that. It would show, in a comparative sense, that we are further outliers in a range of things including public debt and investment in public capital. We are further from the centre than we think. That is just an observation.

Professor McHale makes a very good point in his statement where he says the proposed expansion between 2016 and 2017 is not €1 billion. It is not the fiscal space of €1 billion we are talking about; it is actually €2.4 billion. It is the €1 billion we are talking about in the fiscal space, the €500 million we voted through for health in about an hour before the summer recess without any proper analysis whatsoever and another €900 million which was previously announced for 2017. Will Professor McHale explain to the committee what the big ticket items in the €900 million are?