Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

One of the reasons I called for this debate was that the reports from the ESRI, the Central Bank and the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council are all casting doubt on the capacity of the Government to see through the programme accurately. When my party put forward amendments to the Fiscal Responsibility Bill to require that the Government should at the very least respond to opinions from the fiscal council, they were voted down by the Government. There has been much talk about learning lessons from the crisis. The establishment of the fiscal council was supposed to be one such lesson, but we are not giving it any teeth or allowing its opinions to have any impact on public policy formulation. We may not like the observations of an independent fiscal council but the very least it deserves is a studied and considered response from the Government of the day. For the Taoiseach to glibly come into the House and say that we are not bound by that, with a wave of the hand, and dismiss an independent fiscal council is not healthy. Nor is it in the long-term interests of the country. In Sweden-----

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