Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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I welcome both Ministers and their contributions. I also welcome their acknowledgement of the importance of the independence of the budget office. I have a further question to expand on that. I am interested in the Minister's views on having the budgetary office set up as an independent statutory body. The reason I ask is that in Canada there were controversies about the budgetary office because it was not seen to be independent. We need to be careful not to go down that road here. If we want this to work effectively and we want to be able to scrutinise budgets and, indeed, the Departments of Deputies Noonan and Donohoe, it is critical that the budgetary office be seen to be independent and set up on a statutory basis.

Finally, in the event of the scenario being that there is an independent budgetary office, what would be the most effective role for the fiscal council? Would the Ministers see the role of the council changing or needing to change in any way?