Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

There are two aspects. The forecasting aspect is through the economic and budgetary part. Regarding the budgetary part, with the 5% spending rule and things like existing level of service, in principle we can easily draw those forecasts to the medium term. They can easily get blown off track by Covid or whatever but we can in principle do that and it is not being done. That would help us see the impact of some things. For example, there is a big question about the impact auto-enrolment will have when it comes in. We cannot see that because it is towards the end of the window the Government is looking at.

The other important thing is the planning part. This is not about normal everyday forecasting. It is that we have massive challenges around ageing and climate. Ageing, at least, we understand quite well. It is more a political issue about addressing it. Regarding climate, all countries are behind in their understanding of this enormous economic, social and environmental transition we are going through. In Ireland, we are behind other countries and a long way behind where we need to be. We need to see a clear plan. We now have sectoral targets but we need to know what policies the Government thinks are needed to achieve those targets, how much it will cost, who will pay for it, what the tax and spending implications are. We do not have that kind of information. The planning part, which is a bit different from forecasting, would ultimately inform the forecasting but is missing. In other areas, like Sláintecare, there is bit change going on.