 I'm not going to present a whole series of slides, perhaps a little more literary presentation, if I could use that term. I've been looking at issues of democratic accountability and legitimacy in the context of this whole process and how this process plays out politically and in the process of political decision making and eventually of political acceptance of what comes out of the process. Traditionally, the way we've done budgetary policy in this country has been rather deficient, being very polite this morning. The kinds of debates we tend to have can be categorized, I think, into some main sectors. We have a long debate every year on the finance field. Up to the time that we introduced this semester, we had the sudden death budget. The government arrived into the Doyle with budget proposals. The Doyle accepted them or rejected them. If it rejected them, the budget, the government got thrown out. And we had this tradition that we kept all of this very confidential and secret until the day that it was announced. So you couldn't allow people like me to go out and stock up with loads of cigarettes in advance of an increase in exercise, duties, and so on. And that was the way it was presented. And there was an afternoon and evenings debate around all these issues, leading to a vote that evening, late that night, on the essential financial resolutions. There are things that have to be passed immediately so they could come into effect, typically at midnight that night, and setting up things that could then be brought in in the tax system subject to confirmation within x number of sitting days of the passing of the budget. And the debate on the finance bill usually turned out to be a debate that spent far more time talking about various detailed issues like tax release rather than the overall strategy of the budget. And it's interesting that we tended, have tended always, to spend more time talking about tax reliefs than solidifying the tax base that we actually have. But that was really the context of what people regarded as the main heads of the budget. And that was followed sometime later, typically, by a long debate on the social welfare bill. I know the social welfare term has been changed lately. I haven't caught up with it yet. But there was a long debate about the social welfare bill, which was really probably the only occasion during the year when there was anything approaching a serious debate about distributional issues in budget policy. And again, it was a debate on a series of proposals put forward by the government. Less dramatic if the government lost to vote on an issue in the social welfare bill, it wouldn't be regarded quite so much as a measure of confidence. But nevertheless, it always tended to be the kind of debate where the government needed to get the measures in the bill passed, largely to ensure that the fiscal balance turned out the way it was intended to turn out in the budget. We periodically had debates that gave us an opportunity to look forward at overall economic policy sometime into the future. Now, it didn't happen very often. Usually, it was the presentation of a new economic plan. They tended to go out of favor after a government fell on a rather fully economic plan in October of 1982. But they've been revived since then, although I haven't seen any evidence of a major passionate debate on the latest government set of proposals, perhaps that will happen in the course of the coming months. The result was that there was very little passionate political debate in parliament about long-term issues. I think we're coming through a realization, though, that that's probably not a good way of organizing our economic policy. If we take some of the major policy areas that are going to be important given Irish demographics, if nothing else, education policy, health policy, and indeed climate policy, are all areas that require concerted action planned over a period of years. And typically, if you're going to do anything substantial in any one of those areas, given the demographics, you have to have some consistent line of policy that will last over the lifetime of several governments, or Dala, or whichever way you want to put it. But they should be articulated over a longer period than our last one-year budget-selling framework. It's a difficult thing to do, as the current Minister for Health is finding out. It's difficult in a whole series of areas. I think we're going to have a very lively debate over a period on education policy, again, given the demographics. We've been having a rather confused debate about climate change policy for quite some time, and we're not alone in that. The overall context, even within the EU, is a rather difficult one. But that's the kind of framework that we're facing. And that's the kind of framework within which we have to make all of the things that Michael has set out actually work and conform to the rules that have been set out there. I think it's fair to say that, in operational terms, the process that's been outlined has been digested officially. And I think Michael McGrath's presentation this morning certainly showed that. Has it been digested politically? I think not. And I think that part of the problem has been that we talk about democratic legitimacy and accountability. And I would think, I doubt if anybody here would disagree with me when I say that conventional wisdom today would have it that we don't have broad democratic acceptance or a perception of legitimacy in the current state of economic policy. We don't have a firm belief that we can have confidence in the political system in delivering something comprehensible and acceptable. And that's, as may be, I think we will always have criticisms to make about our political system. But it seems to me there's an element that we should add to concerns with democratic legitimacy and accountability. And that is comprehension of the public. And that's an element that I think is absent from our current debate. Current debate is austerity versus expansion and all those nice things that we talk about. But it seems to me that there is an element that our political system has not brought to the fore. And that's a simple reflection on what happens in the cycle of boom and bust that we go through. It's horrible for the people who suffer, undoubtedly. But there's very little talk about what actually happens. When you have a boom, wealth is created. Sometimes very substantial wealth is created. In Ireland, it took the form partly of real wealth in terms of infrastructural development that we did that was long overdue. Partly of financial wealth, which looks real to the people who have it because you can buy a lot of things. Partly of property wealth. What happens in a bust? What happens in a bust is that a big chunk of that wealth that's been created is destroyed. That's what happens. That's what made us pay 60-odd billion in euro to bail out banks. It is massive destruction of wealth. And if we're talking about democratic legitimacy and accountability in economic planning, we have to have some understanding of where we're starting from. If you go through a boom and a bust, if you're really lucky, at the end of the bust, you'll end up in real terms, in terms of real income, just about where you were at the beginning of the boom. If you're unlucky, you'll end up worse off than you were when it started. Happily, I don't think that's our situation. But you certainly end up a lot worse off than you had become used to be during the course of the boom. So it seems to me there's an element there that we haven't yet brought in to the discussion. And the question I have is whether, in the operation of the kind of process that we've been talking about here, a greater understanding of what that means can actually inform the process of policymaking. Looking at that process, in the discussions we've had in the group, I produced the paper that we have last summer, Democratic legitimacy and accountability, which I don't intend to go into in any detail here. I take it as red if you have the patience, if you don't have the patience to read it, I have a summary addition, which I think deals with the main part of it. But I made five proposals for consideration in that paper. The first one was that in the context of this process, the Doge should discuss and adopt an opinion on the European Commission's annual growth survey, which is produced in November, before it's debated by the European Parliament and adopted by the March meeting of the European Council. If the government is going to participate in a process that's going to shape economic policy in the eurozone, at least, then it seems to me that we're concerned about democratic legitimacy and accountability. It should hear what our parliament has to say about it. And the parliament itself should take the opportunity to express a view. So that's the number one. Second, the government has to submit a stability or convergence program to the European authorities, to the Commission, in April. Again, it seems to me that if we're going to take democratic accountability and legitimacy seriously, that program should be discussed in parliament before it's presented to the European Commission. Third, and this hasn't been a concern for us up to now because we've been in a program, the Commission puts forward country-specific recommendations for economic policy in May. And they are to inform the formulation of the government's budget proposals. Again, it seems to me that those issues should be debated by the Nile so that the government can be informed by what the political system has to say and receive any wisdom that it may have to offer on the issue. I came to a fourth proposal which honed in on the fact that in the presentation, the budget proposals put forward by the government on the 15th of October are proposals and that the Commission is entitled to comment on those before they're finalized. And it seemed to me that that presented an ideal opportunity for a parliamentary consultation before these proposals were put and that instead of having the sudden death kind of budget proposals that we have, that it should be preceded by a debate that would have to do with the balance of fiscal policy with the content of the measures that were put forward before the government put proposals that had to be commented on by the Commission. As it turns out, that was an extremely naive proposal because, of course, politically, our government is not going to bring proposals to parliament unless it's sure that the Commission is not going to shoot them down. Now, it's not 100% naive. It's maybe about 90% naive because I note that Michael has made the point that the Commission actually did express some reservations about the proposals of five member states indicating that it thought that perhaps they would not achieve their targets unless they took action in the meantime. I suspect, politically, that that's about as near as a severe rap on the knuckles that the Commission would give to member states. I think the Commission and the member states will move heaven and earth to make sure that there's almost, if not complete, agreement then as good as agreement on budget proposals before they're put before the National Parliaments. That suggests to me that while that proposal was a very naive one, it makes the previous ones that I put forward even more important because they are the opportunities that we have for a really meaningful political debate on the balance and the content of government proposals. And the fifth proposal I put forward for consideration was that the government did doil, preferably. It's another debate in there that I won't go into. But somebody effectively should establish a dedicated budget committee in the doil because it seems to me that if we look at the complexity of that process and the depth of the issues that we have to deal with in the future, and we're certainly going to be dealing with these issues for quite some time, I don't know, Michael, how long it's expected to be before we've paid back 75% of the bailout loans. I think it's going to be quite some time. These issues will be important for that time. And it seems to me that there is work to be done for a parliamentary committee. If I were being rude, which I won't be, I would say a parliamentary committee that doesn't grandstand in the way that some of them have up to now, but since I'm not being rude today, I won't say that. I had a look then at what actually has happened in the doil, while this process has been put in place. It's had, this process has already had a very clear impact on the work of the Eroctus Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform during the course of 2013. I was mightily impressed to find that the vice chairman of the committee, Dean Toomey, said on the 10th of April last, I read the whole quote, he said, we must seek to make the European semester process part of the DNA of this committee, because once the process becomes fully operational, the committee will have an opportunity to offer its views on the revised budgetary framework. There was a little more, he was looking forward to a meeting with representatives of the commission and a meeting with the minister to discuss the draft stability program. And he said, we will learn how to better structure our engagement in order that when Ireland exits the current economic adjustment program, the committee will be ready for full engagement. And there will be far more meat on the bone as the full value of the European semester becomes apparent. I find that extremely encouraging, because it indicates that there is, at some levels, in our political system, a readiness and appreciation of the importance of getting involved in this process in a more meaningful way than had been the case up to now. The joint committee, I should say, I'm gonna talk about the joint committee. The finance bill committee stage is dealt with by the select committee of the time. The senators aren't involved in that. And I'm not gonna talk about any of the debate they had on the finance bill for reasons that I mentioned earlier on. But the joint committee held 35 meetings during the course of the year. And of those, 12 were either directly or substantially devoted to matters concerning or arising from the European semester. They had three debates directly on phases of the semester. They had two discussions with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council. There were two meetings that were concerned with forthcoming echo-filled meetings. They had two meetings with the governor of the central bank, and they had one meeting with the National Treasury Management Agency. One meeting dealt with a scrutiny of EU legislation, part of it to do with issues arising from the semester. And one meeting was devoted to a review of pre-budget submissions. That incidentally was rather interesting because they looked at two sets of pre-budget submissions. One from a group of, I think they call themselves think tanks that would tend to be rather on the left. And the other devoted to proposals from a group of think tanks that would tend to regard as being on the business side, and therefore probably in political terms that it was to the right. But there was clearly an attempt to look at a fairly wide spectrum of proposals. They had the good sense to follow a procedure laid down many years ago by Rudy Quinn when he was minister for finance, and he said, I'm not going to meet all the people who send me in pre-budget submissions. That was a process that was guaranteed to send finance ministers out of their minds for years, listening to all these things. A number of debates in plenary session of the Doyle touched directly or indirectly on matters relating to the European semester. Second stage of the finance bill, the general debate on the finance bill raised a number of issues about the semester. Michael McGrath, for example, spoke of the need for a tracking mechanism to assess the effects of budget measures and raised issues concerning the redistributive effects of fiscal policy, which is one of the concerns in the semester process. Deputy Pierce Doherty also referred to distributional aspects and referred to concerns with the need for stimulus measures. So it seemed to me that there is a recognition in that Doyle debate of how the semester was becoming important and how the issues raised there were important for the overall design of economic policy. Again, issues relevant to the semester arose during the course of Doyle's statements on the 13th of March in advance of that month's European Council meeting and again on the 23rd of October in advance of another European Council meeting. In March, the Taoiseach referred specifically to the semester process as measures to strengthen economic governance of the EMU and to strengthen democratic accountability. During that exchange, Michal Martin questioned the emphasis by the Eurogroup on fiscal control as a means of addressing the crisis and criticized the lack of a common discipline for stimulus measures. In October, he took issue, Michal Martin took issue with what he described as a lack of meaningful debate in the Doyle in advance of European Council meetings. Now, he undoubtedly has a point there, a bouncer remarked that that's the point always made by political parties in opposition and always ignored by political parties in government. But it seems to me to be a fair point to raise in the context of a semester process that invites or leaves room for national parliaments to play a bigger role that they have here to form. And I think it would be a fair comment to make to our own parliaments and indeed to all national parliaments that they have at least the same obligation to contribute to the process as the European parliaments has. And there's a reality there which I think our national parliaments haven't yet really understood. It's become even more important since the Lisbon Treaty. I've often made the remark that as a Doyle definitely for 21 years, part of the time I was in government, I would have given my right arm to be in a parliaments that had the same budgetary functions as the European parliaments had even before the Lisbon Treaty. Because from 1979 on, the European parliaments has had the ability to modify the European budget. Sometimes it's not by very much, but it's had the ability to modify parts of the budget in a way that members of Doyle and Aaron never could. It has always annoyed me, for example, as a former deputy that a member of the opposition may never put forward a budgetary measure in the context of the philanthropy discussion that would increase expenditure. It's simply out of order. It seems to me that in a democratic parliamentary system, that is a rather silly thing to do, you might say you can do it as long as you say where the savings are gonna come from to pay for it. But that at least would be a major advance. In measures that would help to improve democratic legitimacy and accountability. Accountability certainly, but I think legitimacy also. We then had the budget proposals on October the 15th with the result that Michael has said, the commission didn't have any adverse comments to make about Irish budgetary policy. So if I may be permitted, the slightly political comment is clear that the whole thing was readied up between the government and the commission before they went into the Doyle. That's maybe a smart house way of saying that they did the sensible thing. As a commentary, I think the process that's happened over the year suggests to me that there's the beginning of appreciation in our political system of both the opportunities and the obligations that come from the European semester process. And I would hope that we will see quite soon that our political system will digest the process in the same way that our official system seemed to have done. And I think it's pretty clear from the way presentations have been made that both the Department of Finance and the Department for Public Expenditure and Reform have really begun to internalize what this process means. We need our political system to begin to do that. One final point I'd make is that I think it was important that during the course of the year, the Doyle Committee dealing with these issues had two discussions with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council. The Fiscal Advisory Council has become, I think, familiar to people who talk about policy debates. And it seems to me that it's an innovation that is worth building on. As a suggestion that I made yesterday to a member of the Fiscal Advisory Council who shall be nameless, but he's sitting just there, that it would be useful as part of this process if in addition to doing the validation exercise on government proposals that is currently in our process, we would have a contribution from the Fiscal Advisory Council post-hoc assessing the effects of government policy. And I think over a period that would develop, that would build up a corpus of analysis and interpretations that would certainly help in the formulation or the achievement of a greater degree of democratic legitimacy and accountability for our budget process. Thank you.