Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. The Department of Finance documents on budget day indicated a €500 million fiscal space would be available in 2017. I have never seen a document produced by the Government on fiscal space which has ever turned out to be anywhere within €1 billion of the actual mark. We will take this remark as genuine in so far as it was made, in the full knowledge that nobody ever expects it actually to happen. Will the Minister give us the actual rate for the growth about which we are speaking?

It used to be a ten year average and we are told it has changed. Could the Minister give us a more precise explanation? Even the fiscal council was unaware of those changes some time ago. The Minister said the once-off income we had this year, like the corporation tax, could not be used for Supplementary Estimates in future years.

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