Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank everybody for all their great work on all the documents they produced around the budget. I know it is a huge job. I am glad to see the tax expenditures report as well, which is an area at which our committee is looking. I will ask a question about that in a minute.

On the overall view of the budget, however, it was suggested that the overall impact of the budget is "strongly progressive". In a contribution to us last week, a representative of the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, stated that when we disregard the one-off measures:

The effect of permanent 2023 policy measures to inflation-proofed policies for 2020 gives an indication of the more medium-term challenges facing households and policy-makers. Compared with indexing tax and welfare policies in line with inflation since 2020, budget 2023 leaves households worse off on average.

I understand the ESRI is saying that if we strip out the once-off measures, people are left worse off. It also said that pensioners and lone parents are "likely to experience average income losses" and that the increase in the cut-off rate for the standard rate of tax was going to favour higher-income households. This would challenge the view put forward here that it is "strongly progressive". I am curious as to how the Departments would respond to the ESRI's assessment.