Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

-----and in particular on civil servants who are not permitted to engage in political or public debate. If Members of the House want to change it, that is another debate. I ask Members, including the Deputy, to respect that and to respect the rights of the individuals concerned.

The medium-term fiscal plan will be published on Friday and will contain the latest macro-economic and fiscal forecasts of the Department of Finance. These will inform the Government in its ongoing budgetary deliberations.

As part of the ongoing technical work on debt projections, the NTMA recently drew to the attention of the Department of Finance and the Central Statistics Office the fact that there was a change in its relationship with the Housing Finance Agency that has an impact on the accounts of the two entities. Previously, the NTMA acted as an agent for the HFA, but since late 2010 it has loaned directly to the HFA. These loans appear as assets in the NTMA accounts and liabilities in the HFA accounts. The liabilities of the HFA are included in the general Government debt, but the corresponding assets of the NTMA were included in the liquid assets of the NTMA, which are also part of general Government debt, effectively resulting in a double count. Removing the impact of this double count reduces the estimate of the 2010 general Government debt by €3.6 billion, or 2.3% of GDP.

The Government needs the most up-to-date fiscal information to best plan the path to Ireland's recovery. This kind of accounting mistake is unacceptable and all safeguards will be investigated to ensure it is never repeated. The Minister for Finance made it clear yesterday that he is pursuing his own inquiries into the matter and intends to put in place the most robust system to ensure there is not a repeat of this kind of accounting error, which is unacceptable, in the future.

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