Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Let us move on to the fiscal rules. With the projected balance and so on, 2019 is going to be a fantastic year for whomever is lucky enough to be Minister for Finance - it could well be Deputy Noonan still, heading for a decade in office. As we achieve this structural balance and move away from the convergence criteria, does that not give us a significant amount of leg room, even before 2019? The Minister said he had some ideas. What exactly has he done to try to expand the fiscal rules? I do not agree, by the way, with a word the Minister has said about Greece. Greece has different issues. It has a huge defence budget because it was locked in a century-long struggle with a country across from it that took half its territory, for example. What has the Minister done to try to widen the fiscal envelope for us so that we can start doing the things we want to do? Health is severely rationed in many areas. I welcome Orkambi and so on but we still have these totally unacceptable waiting lists. There are so many other things. I agree with Deputies Boyd Barrett and Chambers. We are not even meeting depreciation rates in terms of capital spending. What has the Minister done to push out that fiscal rule door for us?