Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 18 June 2014
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform
Forthcoming ECOFIN Council: Minister for Finance
4:55 pm
Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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We will return to that point. In respect of the budget, the Minister has made it very clear, as he has every year, that it is the deficit targets and not the adjustment that is at issue. I have made the point that it is not even the adjustment figure that we should be debating but rather how that adjustment is applied - who pays the price. The CSO is reportedly looking at our data in terms of GDP. This will include illegal trade areas. The CSO will include in its June figures prostitution, drugs, pornography and other activities within the economy that will boost our GDP. Some have suggested that this would boost our GDP by close to 1%, which would have the effect of reducing the budgetary target . I think the British figure was 0.7%. Does the Minister have any view as to how much of our GDP will rise as a result of those calculations and what effect it would have on the budgetary adjustments?