Lisa Chambers (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister for his speech. To get back to the Brexit issue, in his budget speech the Minister stated:

Across the Government the necessary measures to prepare for Brexit are being put in place. These plans are based on a central case that there will be agreement in the coming weeks.

Clearly there has not been an agreement. The vote in the House of Commons last night, while expected, was extremely disappointing. It is difficult to see where we will go from here. I agree it is for the United Kingdom now to say where it wants to go but, nonetheless, we have to prepare as best we can for what could potentially be coming down the tracks. My concern is that all the eggs of Government are in the basket of getting a deal. Nobody wants to countenance the prospect that we potentially face a no-deal scenario, possibly at the end of March or a month or two thereafter.

I refer the Minister to the post-budget publications of the Parliamentary Budget Office, PBO. The office has done a significant amount of work based on an orderly Brexit being the central scenario for macroeconomic and fiscal forecasts for 2019. It states that "no sensitivity analysis has been provided by the Government on the impact of changes to the Irish output induced by a 'hard' Brexit on revenue and expenditure projections". Clearly budget 2019 was based on there being a deal, as the Minister has stated. He also said he took into account the potential of a no deal scenario but this does not appear to have been factored into the figures. The PBO made clear that analysis had not been done. What is the Minister's response to what the PBO has said? Does it impact on projected expenditure for 2019?