Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 20 June 2017

Committee on Budgetary Oversight

Irish Fiscal Advisory Council: Discussion

4:00 pm

Mr. Seamus Coffey:

We were in the excessive deficit procedure. The only target that year was to keep the deficit below 3% of GDP. When the additional corporation tax came in in 2015 a large part of it could have been spent and we could still continue to have the deficit below 3% limit. The expenditure benchmark itself applied in 2016, but the issue here was not additional revenue but additional spending. The AIB transaction in 2015 was counted-----