Professor Alan Barrett:

In response to the question on whether we should take on board the social impacts or the issues we talk about, we should be clear on this. When we mentioned in the report that everything should be left on the table - that all the adjustment avenues should be explored - and we threw in social welfare, income tax rates and public sector pay, they, typically, get mentioned because they are precisely the things the Government has taken off the table. It is not the case that we are focusing on them.

I noted the Deputy in his comments very much focused on the fact that we had mentioned social welfare. It is perhaps important for us to stress that we also mentioned income tax precisely because we are worried about the social impacts the Deputy mentioned. Economists are often criticised as being a very right-wing group who only think in terms of expenditure cuts. From very early on we tried to steer away from the notion that austerity worked best if one went down the expenditure cuts road as opposed to the taxation road. We have tried to stress that we did not necessarily buy into that and that, collectively, we were quite open to the notion that taxation could well form a significant part of this overall. To the extent that the Deputy has given any impression that we focused on social welfare, it was part of that package for a very good reason and we are very open to the notion that this should be done through the income tax route for reasons of fairness.