Mr. Seamus Coffey:

I guess there are different ways of looking at it. If we look at it from the perspective of the strict text and the strict numbers put into the five-year plan, the answer is "Yes". A government would not necessarily be allowed to deviate from that. The issue, though, is what would happen if a government were to deviate from that five-year plan. As currently proposed, designed and likely to be enforced, the key will be the original benchmarks from the Maastricht treaty, namely, the 60% debt-to-GDP ratio and the 3% deficit-to-GDP ratio. Countries not meeting those measures, and perhaps deviating away from their agreed net spending plans, would be subject to scrutiny and, potentially, to enforcement and required to introduce measures to bring them back into line with their net spending plans.

For countries like Ireland, however, where the 60% debt to GDP ratio is not really appropriate, because of problems with measuring GDP, and that are unlikely to get to a deficit of 3% of GDP, then if a government of the day in a budget were to put out spending plans that differed from those set out in the medium-term plan, it is unclear to us what enforcement would come about at an EU level, given that Ireland, technically, would satisfy the 60% debt rule and the 3% deficit rule simply because of the very large nature of our GDP due to the presence of multinationals. Technically and legally, then, we would imagine it would be necessary to stick to the five-year plan as set out in the medium-term plan over the five years.