Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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Deputy Donnelly has asked many of the questions I was thinking about. There is no point in us talking about how we are going to scrutinise something, because it is not our function. Our function, as I see it, is to put in place structures for a permanent committee in the future. I was a bit confused when I heard Deputy Eamon Ryan talking about the 2017 budget. Now it is quite clear to me that there is not a chance in hell of having structures in place for the 2016 budget, so we are really talking about 2017.

If we are talking about a parliamentary budgetary office and the establishment of that office, it is very interesting to look at the Austrian parliamentary budget office, which was only set up in 2012.

Much could be learned from how things have been working there, where problems arose, the different structures used and so forth. One of the roles this committee should have is to contact the likes of the Austrian parliamentary budget office to get an idea of how it has been working for the past four years. This committee is here purely to put arrangements in place for something that will be set up for future years. To be honest, when I came in here this morning, I was not quite clear that this was our role but it is becoming clearer to me now.