Dr. Tom McDonnell:

I will assume the package was always going to be €1.2 billion. The Government approached it such that this was to be a once-off package of temporary measures. It ought to have made amends for the failure to index in budget 2023. That would have been a permanent uplift but an indexation process is always sustainable because it will be a function of wage growth and the cost of living in the economy, and that is an input into the size of GDP growth. That would have been a sustainable thing to do and it would have been a once-off uplift. That is probably where I would have focused it. It is not always necessarily the right thing to do to respond instantly. I do not see what the incentive was in February to provide a 9% VAT rate extension. I do not see the economic logic to that at all. That is how I would have done it. I would have had a mini-budget to make amends for the oversights in budget 2023, then waited to see how inflation developed over the coming months and waited for budget 2024 to do it properly.

What was done almost seems to have been done because it was expected. That does not really answer the question.