Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

The spring is really crucial. The stability programme update is probably of particular interest to the council but perhaps of less interest in the general population. This year, however, is really crucial. We have included two reasons for that in the assessment report. First, the Government must make medium-term choices on how it is going to prioritise spending and taxation and how it is going to manage corporation tax and population ageing over the remainder of its term.

This is the opportunity for it to set out its medium-term plan and it has committed to doing that. It is important that it does that and it is going to be difficult because any Government in that situation would face hard choices. It would be helpful if this Government makes those choices at that stage. Things may change in the years to come, but that is really the point to chart the course for the years ahead. That would be a good question to ask.

We set out in our report some specific suggestions for how that information should be presented. That includes having five-year forecasts that should be done on the basis of the standstill that Dr. Casey just mentioned. To me, that is the only sensible way of showing forecasts of public spending. It should include costings of major initiatives such as Sláintecare and should explain what the Government plans to do on the tax side. There is a whole set of basic information that we would expect to be in that report for us to judge it credible.

A final pillar of that is to ask about the institutional side. We have just discussed the debt ratio with the committee and have looked at spending limits, the rainy day fund and prudent accounting ideas. As the Government sets a course through the relatively difficult fiscal times to come, it would benefit a lot from strengthening the fiscal architecture at the same time. That would be complementary to achieving fiscal sustainability and that would be a good issue to explore.