Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Broadly, the systems in the EU that we have looked at have allowed for a get-out clause or for it to be set aside. One reason I ask this, and maybe it is a nebulous question, is that Mr. Paul Johnson of the Institute of Fiscal Studies was at the committee last week. Much of the session was spent talking about when and how it was set aside and how indexation had not constrained the British Government particularly because it was quite quick to break the bounds of indexation when it felt it needed to. It has had it since the 1970s, I think. However, I was surprised that when asked at the end of the session if it had had an impact generally on budgetary operations, forecasting and the general operation of budgets, Mr. Johnson was very positively inclined to say that it had. Even though it has been set aside, it had set a kind of baseline whereby everyone understood what the parameters of operation were.