Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That is okay. It is possible to make an educated guess. Obviously, we see the moratorium on recruitment. That is the major implication facing us. There are others as well, but I take it that is not within the remit of Professor McMahon to answer that question.

It is important to state that we do not have a national spending rule; we have a Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil spending rule. Since those parties have broken this rule every year since they came up with the idea, I am not even sure that we have that as it is at the moment. Is it Professor McMahon's understanding, however, that the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil spending rule is a net spending rule? Has there been an attempt this year to present it as only relating to expenditure, without taking into account the reduced revenue from the tax cuts? Would that fall into what Professor McMahon describes as "gimmickry"?