Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 8 December 2021

Committee on Budgetary Oversight

Fiscal Assessment Report: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council

Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

It is definitely worth thinking about. The current regime has been in place for ten years, since the crisis. We are now in a very different situation compared with then. We also have some experience of how the rules work. It is a good time to revisit those matters. There are several specific issues that we have raised that may be worth considering. The way the rainy day fund is currently designed is not optimal. That is a point we have raised several times. It would be good to revisit it. As we state in this report, there might be a case for putting the expenditure spending rule into legislation. That might be a way of strengthening the Government's commitment to it. It would also be more transparent in terms of exactly what it means. At the moment, it is not exactly clear how it might change and that kind of thing. There are probably other areas too. It would be worth revisiting that and thinking about it in the light of experience.

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