Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent)
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Great. Perhaps Mr. Gallagher would do that. I agree with something Deputy Doherty said. This is a very substantive loss of sovereignty to the State. I am very comfortable with the Department of Finance doing the analysis. This reinforces for me that these are faceless, invisible, anonymous technocrats somewhere in Europe doing analysis of our budget which I believe is the remit of the Department of Finance. I would be obliged if Mr. Gallagher could let the committee know who these people are. I would like to see their qualifications. I want to know who they are. Ideally, I would like to meet them. I would like to know what input the State has into their hiring and firing and who audits them. These are important questions. These people will have tremendous power over Government decisions here.

I have been reading the various articles. There is much emphasis put on the Government supplying the technocrats with very detailed breakdown of expenditure and revenue. Is it Mr. Gallagher's view that these technocrats will form an opinion not just on whether we are compliant with the various rules but on whether they believe it is a healthy mix? For example, could they say that even though we are compliant, they think we are spending too much on roads and not enough on schools?