Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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101. To ask the Minister for Finance the amount of Fiscal Space available for 2017. [28032/16]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The Summer Economic Statement (SES), published by my Department in June of this year projected, in Table A2, that the net fiscal space available for 2017 would be around €1 billion.

The reference rates and convergence margins used for this estimate were set by the European Commission in their Spring forecast in May and will not change. However the final GDP deflator to be used is an average of the Commissions Spring and Autumn deflators. As the Autumn deflator will not be set until November, a forecast produced by my Department was used in the SES. The final deflator used is not expected to significantly change this estimate of fiscal space.