Professor Michael McMahon:

That is not a term I have seen in the academic literature. I have seen the term "gimmickry". Many people think we chose that for other reasons. When I think about good fiscal policy, I think about two broad dimensions. One is a medium-term sustainability aspect. As we argued in the opening statement and as became apparent when we met with other fiscal councils around Europe, Ireland is in a really envious position on that front. We have really good underlying dynamics. That is a real positive. The challenge here is whether we can do the right countercyclical policy at this moment. In that sense, we would have preferred a more countercyclical policy. For instance, as was said in the discussion with Deputy Durkan earlier, it is a decision for the Government of the day whether to do the tax cuts as well as the cost-of-living supports. It was perfectly within the Government's power to not do the tax cuts, do the cost-of-living support and maybe target them even more and still come in under the national spending rule with no need for any gimmickry. We made this clear in advance in our pre-budget submission. In that sense, given what rule the Government has set out for itself and given where the economy is, it made the "everything now" choice and stopped making the choices that we believed necessary.