Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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It is nice to see Professor Barrett. My understanding is that the SWITCH model is quite old. Does the ESRI have plans to update it? I appreciate that this would require funding, probably from the Government. Some work has been done on a more real-time model.

What would Professor Barrett describe as the strengths and weaknesses of this model? For instance, certain distributional factors are included while others are not. If a deprived area gets a new school, it does not count under the SWITCH model even though the impact on the children's lives is significant. There are other, more concrete, examples. I have never fully understood the rules of what the ESRI counts in and out. Will Professor Barrett give us a picture of the situation? His reference to the back to education allowance was probably a good example of the difference between researchers and politicians. A great deal of money is spent on the allowance annually, amounting to more than €200 million in the Department of Social Protection. The ESRI's report was critical of the allowance because it did not seem to lead to people immediately getting jobs. The response from many Deputies was that the allowance was important because it could, for example, be accessed by lone parents and the educational attainments had a value in themselves for a lone parent and his or her children, given that they are the people most at risk of poverty, but this is not captured in some of the types of analysis conducted by the ESRI. This follows on from the previous question. While I appreciate Professor Barrett's point that the ESRI does not have the job to be political, even with a small "p", it is analytical.

Down the years, I have seen a particular criticism of something that has led to a divide between the political perception and the analysis, namely, community employment. As a consequence, when the crisis hit Ireland, everyone with a briefcase who came to advise us from outside read all of the ESRI's reports, which were not flattering towards the likes of community-based employment schemes even though many Deputies from across the political spectrum favoured them strongly because they saw the local impact. Being able to put forward a range of views is important, but the ESRI could play a valuable role for the committee in explaining matters from an economic perspective. The institute's staff are mostly economists and social researchers whereas we, as a political committee composed of diverse elected politicians, might view matters differently.

With the exception of the Department of Social Protection, I am unaware of any Department conducting pre-budget and post-budget distributional analyses of the budget on a continual basis, yet it is one of the suggestions that has been discussed at this committee. Does Professor Barrett believe it is feasible for a range of Departments to conduct these analyses? The Department of Social Protection's social impact analysis is partly based on the ESRI's SWITCH model work. If it could find its way into some of the committee's analysis, it would be useful, but we would probably need a great deal of technical advice as to what would be desirable to be received from Departments so that, in theory, a budget's distributional impacts generally and on specific Departments could be analysed broadly. On budget day, the initial pre-budget impact analysis could also be published.

This was mentioned by a lot of people in the discussions we have had to date. Does Professor Barrett see that as being feasible? Would the ESRI have a role to play in assisting the Departments and the budgetary oversight committee in that analysis?