Professor Peter Clinch:

I agree that the home renovation incentive scheme is a good example of where Revenue has tried to provide some reward to householders for uploading VAT receipts from their builders and tradesmen. It is an area that would be very beneficial to focus on.

It would also help us to monitor what is going on in the economy as well because the data, as the Deputy says, will be deficient.

The other point is that we tend to do piecemeal things with the tax system so that we add and add and that is why we have ended up with a highly complex tax system. We would really encourage that it be reviewed, simplified and also that there would be some coherence around it as well in order that people understand it. The Deputy raised a number of issues, and bringing them together, one thing that we have been very forthright on in everything we have said, and it is important we say it here, is that huge credit should go to this and previous Administrations, through Cabinet committees on the economy, economic management committees and the like, and to the Oireachtas as well, for a relentless focus on bringing our macroeconomic indicators back into line. By that I mean our budget deficits, sorting out our banks, bringing our debt-to-GDP ratio down and all of those macroeconomic things.

We know that these are the outputs of what goes on under the bonnet of the economy. We are in a fixed exchange rate system. We are about to have an economy next door which will be in a flexible exchange rate system and which can, as we have seen, drop the value of its currency quite dramatically and have the sort of impact we discussed on food exports, which have dropped by half a billion euro in value. We are competing with countries that have that flexibility. We do not have that flexibility in our currency. We do not have control of interest rates. We do not have control of exchange rates. We do not have control over energy prices and we are highly dependent upon energy. The only instruments we have are our competitiveness levers.

How do we get costs down? How do we use our valuable money in the capital programme and ensure we invest in the right things and have the right ex ante and ex post evaluation of those capital programmes to make sure we are spending on the right things and, in the changing global environment in which we are working, ensure we take advantage of any opportunities from Brexit? For example, do we have the infrastructure that can handle that kind of investment coming in? We are calling for the same relentless focus from Government and the Oireachtas on those issues as well as the macroeconomic indicators which we have brought back into line from the height of the crisis and which look really good. There are dangers and the decisions we make today will determine how competitive we are in five or ten years. That equity between different age groups will be as important as achieving equity within this particular generation.