Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

No, that is okay. The other point I want to make is in regard to the Commission's report. I wrote to Mr. Coffey about this and I am still waiting for a response. I wrote to him earlier this month seeking some clarification on this. We had an engagement with the Department on this issue but the Commission in its report stated: "Overall, the Council is of the opinion that further measure will be needed, notably in 2017...". This is in regard to a breach and the background to it is the AIB transaction in 2015, which allowed for the baseline to be increased, and now that one-offs are being disregarded, it has retrospectively said that this one-off should be disregarded as well. That means the €1 billion the fiscal council had in the baseline is now gone and the expenditure benchmark has been breached to such an extent that, to use the Commission's words "further measures will be needed, notably in 2017". The then Minister said that his officials had been taking this issue up bilaterally with the European Commission. I queried that with the Department and its officials had been involved in bilateral discussions with the Commission before it published its report. The Commission was of the view that it still needed to state this. Mr. Casey can correct me on this if I am wrong, but I believe that is the first time the Commission has come out and said there has been a significant breach that requires further measures, notably in 2017.

The Department's view is it will reach the other target next year so the approach is one of be damned with this target, which is the expenditure benchmark that the one the fiscal council is telling us to be guided by even when we do not have to comply with this. Can the witnesses elaborate on that? I presume they are aware there is no reference to this in their report. To me, that point is significant. The Commission is saying we are in breach but the fiscal council did not even mention that in its report. This was elaborated on further as a result of my writing to Mr. Coffey and from the discussion with the Minister and the Department, but there was no reference to this in Mr. Coffey's opening statement. Is there a reason for that? Does he agree with the Department's approach of forgetting about the expenditure benchmark and breaches and just proceeding?