Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 24 June 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Photo of Michael McGrathMichael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Sure. Can I raise the issue of the structural budget balance, or the cyclical balance as such, and you say on page 8 of your witness statement, "Measures of the underlying balance (the so-called structural balance [...] did not raise any red-flags either." And you're referring to the pre-crisis period presumably. So, can you just clarify for the inquiry, who measured the structural balance, was there a common methodology across Europe, for example, and what kind of figures were being reported for Ireland in, say 2006-2007, for structural balance?