Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The remarks I made were about the Bill as a whole and its connection with the treaty; they were not founded particularly on section 2. I will read the speaking note on the section to illustrate its scope. It requires the Government to endeavour to comply with the fiscal rules set out in subsequent sections. It also provides that the official macro-economic and budgetary forecasts prepared by the Department of Finance shall include all the data needed to assess if the Government is complying with the budgetary rules.

As regards the Deputy's question, the legislation is for the future, it is not to correct past mistakes. However, we can learn from the past when designing the rules. That is what has happened. There is now general agreement that what were deemed to be surpluses when one thought the country was going very well were not structural surpluses at all. There were so many transactional taxes in the mix that one was looking at structural deficits. There was a misunderstanding of what was the actual position. The concept of structural surpluses and deficits has only recently come into the general debate in the Dáil. If it had been included in the debate at the time arising from fiscal rules, the Government of the day might have had a different take on what was happening. There was no doubt it genuinely believed things were going very well. On a structural basis, however, they were not because so much of the revenue was based on transactional taxes which would rise and fall with the property bubble.