Mr. Matt McGann:

I will perhaps lead off and then other people might want to come in. We published, and have done for a couple of years, a distributional analysis of the budget. This one was contained what we have been referring to as the third budget document, that is, the quality of life or Beyond GDP document. This is what our distributional analysis shows. We separated the 2022 measures from the 2023 measures. There might have been a temptation to lump them one on top of the other because it looks bigger, but it is affecting people's incomes in different years. It would be a bit disingenuous if that was done and, therefore, we separated 2022 from 2023. Looking at the 2022 measures, we see the largest increases in income to the first three deciles, which are, on average, a 4.5% increase compared to 1.4% for deciles four to ten. Then, it is similar for the 2023 measures but the increase for the first three deciles is even larger at 5.2%.

As the Deputy stated, the ESRI analysis does say that with the once-off measures, lower-income households will be better off in inflation-adjusted terms. It is important to clarify that our analysis is not inflation adjusted. It is in nominal terms whereas the ESRI's analysis is inflation adjusted. Neither is wrong; they are just asking different questions. We would argue that ours is less complex and simpler, but perhaps more communicable, because it shows people the change to their income before and after the budget purely as a result of the budgetary measures. The ESRI shows the change compared to a hypothetical inflation-adjusted scenario for 2023, or a multi-annual one to which the Deputy referred. Obviously, one of the key assumptions in the inflation-adjusted scenario is the inflation projection. If the inflation projection or the number is different then it will completely change the results of the analysis. That is not to say it is not legitimate. It is, but it is just doing a different thing to what we do, which is looking at it on a purely nominal basis. Doing that inflation-adjusted analysis for the next year is dependent on the projection. Doing it on a current year basis for 2022 is really difficult. That is why the ESRI actually goes back to 2020, rebuilds 2021 and then compares it across 2022 - all the measures across the year - to a hypothetical rebuilt 2021 population, so it is even more complex.

On the point about excluding the one-off measures, I am not really convinced of why the one-off measures are excluded. That is real money that is going to people and going into their income. The one-off measures are very significant. The reason why the budget utilised those one-off measures is because of the broader environment in which the budget was framed, which was extreme unprecedented uncertainty, most obviously in the case of inflation. To be fair to the ESRI, I watched last week's session and Dr. Karina Doorley said the use of the one-off measures was a good solution in the face of the level of uncertainty in which the budget was framed.