Professor John McHale:

I thank Senator Barrett for his remarks and for his encouragement, which has been greatly valued by us since our establishment. Basically, we must deal with the mandate we have been given, which has four well-defined elements to it, namely, the endorsement function, assessing budgetary forecasts, assessing compliance with fiscal rules and assessing the fiscal stance. The type of elements about which the Senator is talking often are referred to as focusing more on costings and broader micro-policy evaluation. There are independent fiscal institutions that do that kind of work and if one looks across fiscal institutions across the world, in the Netherlands, for instance, the Central Planning Bureau has a long tradition of doing such costing work. The Office for Budget Responsibility in the United Kingdom also conducts costing work of that type and one sees huge variations in this regard. One point I would make however is that independent institutions that have such a mandate tend to be a lot bigger than we are. As the Senator is aware, that type of cost-benefit analysis and costing work is a highly resource-intensive activity. As for comparing us with fiscal institutions in other countries, I have actually just returned from a conference in Spain, which has set up a new council. It currently has 45 staff members and the people there were complaining about the size because they want to get to a staff complement of 70. When I told them the size of our organisation, they really could not believe it. While part of the reason for that is they have a mandate that requires them to do things our mandate does not require us to do, I agree with the Senator that this type of work needs to be done. At the executive level, the new Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service is doing more of that sort of cost-benefit analysis. However, I will repeat something I have stated in public previously, which is that an Oireachtas budget office that would do this type of work would be a valuable addition to the overall institutional framework in Ireland. While this could be done by a much-expanded fiscal council, I believe we are working well with the mandate we have at present in our current size. I believe we do it very efficiently, in part because we have such excellent people working for us. I will take this opportunity to thank the secretariat, who do the heavy lifting. The reason we can do this with such a small staff is because of the quality of the people we have. However, the Senator's broader points that there must be much greater input into the policy process at that micro-economic level, as well as the potential of an Oireachtas budget office to do that, certainly are worth considering.