Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 20 June 2017

Committee on Budgetary Oversight

Irish Fiscal Advisory Council: Discussion

4:00 pm

Mr. Michael Tutty:

From the point of view of the report published recently, we knew the Commission had changed the rules. It had published the rule change. We did not know whether it was going to be applied retrospectively. Our report mentions it and states that if that rule is applied there would be a significant breach. At the time of completing the report I certainly did not now the Commission had decided to implement it retrospectively. We would not think it right that it would be applied retrospectively because we produced a budget on the basis of rules that were in place and suddenly the rules were changed, so what can we be expected to do? From a practical point of view, we do not think it should be applied retrospectively.