Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the Minister and his officials. The Taoiseach has said that the overriding ambition of this budget will be to balance the books in order to reach the medium-term objective. Just before the Minister came in, we heard from representatives of the parliamentary budget office. The calculation of fiscal space is affected by the target of reaching the medium-term objective. In reaching that objective, the Minister is using a calculation provided by the European Commission. However, the IMF and OECD use different measures to calculate the fiscal space. Why is the Minister so wedded to the Commission's method of using those figures given that it has been proven, including by many witnesses who appeared before the committee in recent weeks, that said method is unsuitable for the Irish economy? In that context, there was a rise in the output gap from last year's budget to the summer economic statement. What drove that rise? What effect has that rise had on the calculation of the fiscal space?