Dr. Eddie Casey:

Going back to budget 2015 and considering where we thought we would have been by last year is telling. That document projected a close-to-balanced budget, if not a surplus, corporation tax of approximately €5 billion per annum and interest costs of approximately €9 billion. Let us consider the differences in what has happened since then. Corporation tax receipts have doubled and interest costs are approximately half of the forecasted figure, yet we are still just barely running a surplus. Most of the projected surpluses have been swallowed up in spending increases from budget to budget or within individual years outside of the budgetary process. Some of the revisions were due to the fact that the original projections were not that realistic. When the council says that medium-term plans are incredible, we are saying that we do not find realistic the very slow pace of spending growth that the Department of Finance and the Government are forecasting in their three-year, four-year and five-year projections. The same was true back then.

We have a table in the report that shows what happens with budgets that are just one year ahead. Even over the course of one year, the pace of spending increase ramps up dramatically between the initial plans set out in April, the plans we see in October and the eventual outturn. It goes well beyond what we would consider a prudent pace of growth.