Mr. Seamus Coffey:

That is a very fair question. One way to look at it is the different types of audience that IFAC tries to address. First, there is the Government and the role in the endorsement of the macro forecasts and the assessment of the budget. The second is the Members of the Oireachtas via our valuable appearances here with the Committee on Budgetary Oversight. The third is the general public.

It is very difficult to measure whether we are having a direct impact on policy because we do not know what the counterfactual is. We do not know what the budget would be if there was not a fiscal council. It is really hard to know if it would be different. What we want to do is to get an awareness right across the government, Members of the Oireachtas and the general public of the need to make sure that we maintain the fiscal capacity to respond when we do hit problems. Economies do hit problems from time to time. We have a history with that in Ireland.

One reason for having a body like a fiscal council is to keep a focus on the difficulties that arise when we get fiscal policy wrong, and try in some way to keep either the Government, politicians or the public informed of those. How effective can a fiscal council be in doing that? We think it is important to get our message across. We have those interactions with the Government when it comes to doing the macro forecasts before the budget and then the assessment after. We have our appearances here. We take very seriously our role in discussing these elements with the general public. We would like to think that is having an impact even in informing or contributing to the debate. It is very difficult to say whether that has a direct impact on policy. These decisions are made by the Government and the Oireachtas. A body like a fiscal council is outside of that but can provide a valuable contribution to the decision-making process while not being centrally involved with it itself.