Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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I thank the members of the Fiscal Advisory Council for attending. I have a single question. It would be a shame for the witnesses to visit a political establishment and not be asked a political question. We all understand, I hope, the thrust of what they have been saying in the advice they have been giving. I did not understand until now that Fianna Fáil would take €2 billion out of the budget as recommended but I did understand the rest. The witnesses can give me the answer that it is none of my business, that they have a particular remit and engaging with the politics is not part of it but in the circumstances in which we find ourselves, if the Government had proceeded to implement the advice to the letter of the law and against the fact that the indicators, especially with regard to the deficit, are ahead of target, and in the current febrile mood where there is such a cranky environment after eight contractionary budgets, as they say in their statement, and six long years of recession and so on and people feeling they cannot take any more, does the Government not have to make decisions or are we in a circumstance where, notwithstanding the Government's huge majority, it goes out of business, the Fiscal Advisory Council is still in business counselling prudence and so on but there is chaos politically? We could easily find ourselves in that circumstance if the Minister for Finance had proceeded to implement the letter of the witnesses' advice. I understand the reason that advice is proffered but no Government could take the recommendations and say even though the skies fall we will implement them. We really have tested people's forbearance as far as it can be done, especially when the backdrop is the economic indicators being largely positive. There is a huge conflict for the average citizen when they hear Ministers and financial and economic commentators saying that all the macro-indicators are generally positive when the combination of wages decline and tax increases means that they have taken a severe hit over six years. It is not the witnesses' business but what is their view?