Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Yes. That view can be parked because it is disputed by the Department and the Government. The point Mr. McCarthy has made here, however, is that the Commission did not call for an adjustment. It has called for one. Let us consider the outcome if the Department loses the argument, into which it entered before the Commission published the report. Obviously, the Commission believed it was on strong enough ground to make its statement, which is quite significant. It stated we were in breach of the fiscal rules but that the deviation was not significant enough. However, it is now sufficiently significant to demand that measures be taken in 2017. It is important, therefore, that the committee understand the magnitude of what could potentially be playing out. The transaction in 2015 benefited the Government in complying with the expenditure benchmark. If in late December it had not come in, we would have breached the rules that year, but it is now coming back to bite us quite hard. If the Department is unable to convince the Commission on how it is dealing with the one-offs and dealing with them retrospectively, what will it mean for the budgetary position in 2017 and the baseline against which we will measure budget 2018?