Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)

I thank the Chair. The witnesses are all very welcome to this important engagement. Dr. Barrett mentioned that we had had a loose fiscal disposition in recent years. All the evidence and information seem to point to the fact that we will continue in this budget and into the future under this Government to pursue that same approach, despite the contrary evidence that it is not a good thing overall for our economy, the public finances ultimately and our society in the longer term.

This question is specifically for the witnesses from IFAC. We have a Government presiding over a situation where we still have no spending rule.

We had a summer economic statement that was, to put it diplomatically, opaque. A medium-term framework published last week contained no spending ceilings whatsoever for Departments. That document was, frankly, a mickey-take. How it was presented was completely unacceptable. It was an insult to the Oireachtas and the Irish people.

We have perennial spending overuns, which are a common feature of the system. We have a Department of Finance which, over 13 consecutive years, has managed to make a hames of corporation tax forecasting. This has not been independently reviewed. We continue to pursue procyclical policies. It seems we believe that introducing new taxation of any form is a bad idea, even though we cannot continue to spend the way we do, invest the way we do, cut taxes and expect a different outcome from the one we had in 2008. We have Ministers who remind us all the time of the concentration risks involved with corporation tax and the impact of our reliance on multinational corporation jobs for our income tax base. Looking at the profile of income tax, that should be a matter of concern. Is it incompetence?