Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I do not agree with the Deputy at all; I think it would be helpful to know. Everybody is in favour of more services and so on, but we need to know their cost and how they will fit in to affordability. That is part of the anchoring of policy discussion in what is deliverable. As I said when I addressed the committee of which the Deputy is a member, we have established the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service as an independent service to evaluate the economic value of any proposal. That is being increasingly effective in producing independent analysis of service provision as it is, service provision internationally and service as it might be provided, anchoring it in economic reality. That is how we should look at it.

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