Stephen Donnelly
Question:239. Deputy Stephen S. Donnelly asked the Minister for Finance if he will provide an estimate of the earliest date that the full no policy change budget for budget 2015 will be seen. [13526/14]
View answerTuesday, 25 March 2014
Questions (239)
Written answers
In advance of each Budget, the White Paper on Receipts and Expenditure is published, in accordance with the provisions of Article 28 of the Constitution. As the Deputy will be aware, the White Paper contains the fiscal forecast for the forthcoming year based on a position of no policy change.
This forecast is based on the same macroeconomic and fiscal policy data as the forecast contained in the budget booklet. This allows for the fiscal forecasts to be directly compared, showing the impact of budgetary measures. For Budget 2014, this data is contained in Table 7 on page C.14 of the budget booklet.
In order to ensure that the fiscal forecast contained in the White Paper is still relevant at the time the Budget is announced, it is necessary to wait until close to Budget day before it is finalised. For this reason, any forecast based on no policy change will not be available until the days prior to the announcement of budgetary measures.
The Deputy should note, however, that budgetary forecasts for the next four years will be set out in the update of the Stability Programme which must be submitted to the European Commission by the end of April. Policy assumptions underpinning the forecasts will be set out in the document.