Professor Michael McMahon:

There are two elements to it, namely, how much information the Department gives us and how we react to that. As for whether it likes or dislikes our critique, I will not presume to know that. For instance, within Covid-19 spending, there is an amount of about €150 million which goes to the Department of Transport for reduced ticket prices. That is still in as non-core. The question is whether we really believe, three years on, that is going to continue. Again, 90-minute tickets are available in many European cities. We are not taking an approach to that but rather the budgeting of it. When we find out what that €150 million is covering and that is what it is, then we would say that probably should be in core by now and we should be thinking about how we raise revenue to spend it. If a future Government says it does not want those anymore, it could remove them and that would give more space to the Government under the spending rule. The first stage is we get the information. There was no resistance about telling us what the €150 million was. From that we form a critique, and maybe I should not say this, but friends of mine often think we sit down with the Ministers and advise them. I am sure members are all aware this is not what we do. We assess after the event. After we have received the information, we do not go back to them to get a sense of how they are feeling about what we said.