Mr. Derek Moran:

Engagement is hugely important. As Mr. Watt said, the budget-specific information that is available is vast compared to what it used to be. I said in my opening statement that one of the issues for the committee relates to the capacity to digest that. The parliamentary budget office will help that. Having a memorandum of understanding between the Departments and the parliamentary budget office in terms of that interaction will help hugely. I am very pleased with some of the interactions. Things like the tax strategy group were a minority sport but having them discussed in this type of forum gives them a currency at a more fundamental level. It is not about choosing individual policy items. It is about looking at the core structure and this is to be welcomed.

Tax expenditure is expenditure under any other name. Voted expenditure gets scrutinised at a level which tax expenditure, traditionally, has not been subjected to. The Department brings far greater attention to what the costs would be. We set out our tax expenditure guidelines, start to produce a tax expenditure report setting the various costs of that and try to ensure that when a tax expenditure is introduced, there is a drop-dead date - there is an evaluation requirement.

When we hit the bad times we found that we had huge massive amounts of expenditures that we had to wheedle out of the way, I believe it was €1.5 billion over a couple of years. We should not allow that to develop because submissions must be rational and sensible. People who present themselves here and who lobbying for change must be challenged around why the change is being done and what is the cost. It is as much about cost as expenditure terms of voted expenditure with consideration being taken of revenue foregone, even if that aspect is a little less easy to see. I welcome that level of engagement and it can only be positive with respect to the scrutiny of proposals. We always have the risk of people coming in and telling us that tax expenditure can be self-financing or that it will effectively cost nothing. That is nonsense. Has Mr. Watt thought of it as being inappropriate?