Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Dr. Casey.

We got an insight into the spat between the Tánaiste and IFAC. He was hitting out at IFAC and saying that it was not able to predict the Government running a surplus and the council was hitting back, at least internally, and saying that this was a Government that could not predict Christmas and was holding onto the idea that the council was unable to predict the pandemic and that, if the Government was so good, it should have increased ICU capacity. I do not expect the witnesses to comment, although they might want to on some of that. Some of it is probably not best aired in public but it has been anyway. I will give the witnesses the opportunity to outline the issue that was the Tánaiste's main claim and source of attack on IFAC, that being, that the council had repeatedly failed to predict the Government's surplus and that the Government was doing a great job. From this report, I presume that is because of one-off costs and so on.

Does Mr. Barnes want to take this opportunity to outline the council's view on that? It was suggested on national radio that the council has repeatedly failed to predict that the Government would run a budget surplus.