Vol. 461 No. 1
81 Mr. J. Mitchell asked the Minister for Finance if he will give the EU definition for the term Structural Budget Deficit; the amount of the Irish Structural Budget Deficit for 1995; and the comparative figures for the other 14 EU member states. [2292/96]
The information requested can be found in an article published in volume 60 of the European Commission's publication European Economy¹. This details the Commission's methodology for calculating the cyclically adjusted budget balance, which corresponds to the Structural Budget Deficit.
The structural budget deficit is an estimate of what the budget balance would be if economic activity, and, by extension, Government expenditure and revenue, was at its trend level. However, there is a large measure of uncertainty regarding trend output measurement. Indeed the relevance of the concept for a small highly open economy such as Ireland is open to question. Hence, no estimate of the cyclically adjusted budget can be considered as an accurate quantification of the underlying budgetary position.
