Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I admire the work of the Fiscal Advisory Council and am in general agreement with its overall view of the fiscal policy that should be followed. In the SPU, however, I had to use the data to hand at the time and we made it quite clear in the SPU that as the data changed the compliance rates would change. Subsequent to the publication of the SPU, the Commission came out with a new set of figures. I do not know why but the Fiscal Advisory Council does not seem to have factored that in because the Commission has said we comply fully with the fiscal rules. The assessment by the Commission finds that "the rate of expenditure growth net of discretionary revenue measures, as planned in the SPU, is expected to be in line with the requirements of the expenditure benchmark pillar". Rather than our coming in at 0.4% or 0.3% of an adjustment as against 0.6% the Commission has said we will come in at 0.8% in the next budget on the basis of the new data. It is not the Department of Finance or the Fiscal Advisory Council that decide whether one is complying or not, it is the Commission and it is saying we are well within the boundaries of requirement.

On the Deputy’s other point, we made it quite clear that while we were spelling out the details of what was required for the 2016 budget beyond that we envisage a change of government. Maybe the same parties will compose it, maybe other parties will be in it. We said in the SPU that we were projecting on a no policy change but we did outline the fiscal space. The Deputy may regard that as a criticism but I do not think it would be appropriate for a government in its last year of office to do detailed budgets for the next five years, 2016 is within our remit, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 are not. We identified the fiscal space. We said it was on a no policy change. It will be a matter for the next government to fit the policy into the fiscal space available but we did identify the fiscal space.

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