Vol. 437 No. 6
169 Mr. Cox asked the Minister for Finance if he will give a list of the items in each financial year since 1980, together with the amount of money involved in respect of each measure, which either accelerated the collection of tax revenue from one year to another, deferred expenditure from one year to another or, at the end of the year, accelerated expenditure from the coming year into the current year.
Government accounting structures are operated on a cash-based system. Records are not maintained in a format which facilitates identification of the information sought by the Deputy. I should point out that, irrespective of the net impact of specific shifts from year to year in the level of expenditure or revenue, the effect on the EBR of factors such as those outlined in the question would, of course, tend to balance out over longer time-periods. The Deputy may be concerned whether recent levels of annual borrowing have been artificially low. I would point that the EBR expressed as a percentage of GNP has declined from an average of about 14¾ per cent over the 5-year period 1979-1983 (within a range of almost 2 percentage points each side of that average) to an average of 2¼ per cent over the period 1989-1993 (within a range of less than half a point of GNP). Having regard to the limited influence they could have on the EBR over time I do not propose to allocate to the task the major administrative resource which would require to be invested to evaluate the factors mentioned, at this remove, for the years in question.
