Mr. John McCarthy:

We set out, in the summer economic statement, that on the basis of the expenditure benchmark the net fiscal space would be €1.3 billion. If one just goes with the expenditure benchmark, that would not be sufficient to achieve the balanced budget or -0.5% that the Minister mentioned. We had to remove between €100 million and €150 million in calculating the net fiscal space to ensure compliance and achieving the -0.5% because Government policy for three years has been to achieve same by 2018.