Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

I might just add to what Dr. Casey said. In a typical year, in cash terms, there would probably be about €4 billion under the spending rule, and the €800 million is the part that is missing. The figure €800 million is not massive within the wider scheme of public spending, but it is not nothing either and, obviously, it accumulates over the two years. The question is what to do about it. To meet the spending rule, we could either not stand still and decide we would allow pensions to be less generous by not adjusting for inflation or taking various steps of that nature, or we should be able, in principle, to offset tax measures or do less by not spending money on some other project we have. As Dr. Casey said, one floor in the existing framework is that there is no offset for tax measures, so we should be able to say we will spend 6% this year while finding the 1% from higher taxes. This speaks to the wider question as to whether it would be helpful to put the 5% spending rule on some kind of legislative footing, partly to make it more credible, because at the moment it appears in the Department of Finance documents to some extent but it is not an official measure that has come before the Oireachtas and that people have had an opportunity to buy into and discuss democratically. Furthermore, if we were to put some of these details, such as the tax part and various other details relating to how it is specified, into law, we would have to write down what it says.