Mr. John McCarthy:

I will give a little bit more flavour and detail. My team on the macro forecasting side would engage with the council on two occasions a year, in advance of the budget in September, and in advance of the stability programme update, which the Government normally submits to Europe in April. We then tend to engage with the Oireachtas because we attend the finance committee and make the exact same presentation we give to the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council in terms of the budget. That has been done for the past three years. The Minister tends to accompany us then, again to the finance committee, to discuss the stability programme. That is the engagement with the council on the macro forecasts. We would then engage with it because every year it does two fiscal assessment reports in terms of the stance of fiscal policy and whether it is compliant with the rules. That is what we had last week or the previous week. Then the Minister formally replies, as he is legally required to do, to the council's opinion in the fiscal assessment reports. Then there is some informal engagement as well during the year in terms of how the rules are applied and how things are going and so forth. That is much more informal. We have both formal and informal meetings.