Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 6 October 2020
Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach
Revised Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance (Revised)
Vote 8 - Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General (Revised)
Vote 9 - Office of the Revenue Commissioners (Revised)
Vote 10 - Tax Appeals Commission (Revised)
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Most people understand the scale of work being undertaken by the public service during that period in getting the July stimulus together, which happened towards the very end of July. It was being implemented and staff were continuing to work on developing the “stay and spend” scheme, which was announced in the July stimulus but not implemented at the time, and dealing with commencement notices. While the July stimulus was published and enacted by the end of July, most of the commencement, the setting up and the statutory instruments came through during the period after that. The reason we did not have the forecast at that time was there was just so much uncertainty that it would have been a very risky business trying to say with any certainty what was going to happen in the next three to five years at that point, which was at the height of Covid.