Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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I am left to wonder what is the endorsement range for the Government in respect of the advice the councils provides it. That range would seem to be pretty narrow. I wish to put five questions to our guests. I will try to get through them in the 12 minutes available.

On the advice the council gave in respect of the precautionary credit line, reference was made to levels of advice offered to the Government. Will Professor McHale indicate whether this was official advice and whether it was made in written form? I am sure that if it were written, the committee would be very interested in seeing it.

In his opening contribution Professor McHale referred to there being scope for modest increases in expenditure post-2016. Given that it is in the excessive deficit procedure, I understand that the balanced-budget rule currently does not apply to this State. However, that rule will kick in at some stage and we will be confronted with the issue of the 0.5% structural deficit. I presume the council factored this into its thinking when it arrived at its conclusion to the effect that there would be scope for modest increases in expenditure after 2016. In view of the fact that the council has assessed where matters would stand in the context of our debt had all of the austerity not happened, I am sure it has tried to estimate what that 0.5% structural deficit will mean by way of further consolidation.

Economists are like all other professionals in that their advice comes with the appropriate caveats built in. The council points out in its report how tricky it is to forecast growth. In their predictions for 2013, the Central Bank, the Department of Finance, the ESRI, the IMF, the European Commission and the OECD all forecast growth of at least 2%. We know that this did not materialise and that the actual rate will be approximately 0.2%. That is dramatically lower than predicted. Will our guests map out the consequences if the scenario in this regard were to be replayed in 2014? What impact would such an eventuality have in terms of targets, etc.?

In its assessment of budgetary forecasts, the council referenced slippage in terms of current spending and attributed this to weaker economic conditions and policy decisions.

Professor McHale attributes that to weaker economic conditions and then policy decisions. Can he elaborate on the policy decisions to which he was referring? Might I speculate that it may have been related to health spending being out of control and an inability to meet budgetary targets?

Professor McHale went on to comment about public confusion on the size and composition of the budgetary adjustment. Will he elaborate on that statement also? He further stated that the Government should "identify more clearly the impacts of consolidation measures". That is fair enough but I would like to know the type of analysis he has in mind. Is it a purely fiscal analysis or a broader impact assessment of different sectors of society, say, women or people with disabilities? That is an issue we have raised with both the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform with an eye to further improving the budgetary architecture and decision-making by embedding equality budgeting and assessments in real time on real cohorts of people and not just a purely mathematical analysis in the broadest sense. Those are my questions which I have raced through somewhat but I ask Professor McHale to work his way through them.