The establishment of a fiscal council had been proposed domestically in the National Recovery Plan 2011-2014 and by the Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service in November 2010.
[1][2] The Fiscal Council was formed as part of a programme of reform of Ireland's "budgetary architecture" post the Irish economic crisis.
It was established on an interim basis in July 2011, and legally constituted under the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2012[3] which was part of the EU-IMF Programme of Financial Support for Ireland (and whose terms required the creation of a "budgetary advisory council to provide an independent assessment of Government forecasts").
Each annual event is intended to focus on a particular theme, which has been: The Fiscal Council also publishes analytical notes and working papers in areas of concern to Irish financial stability (including house prices, tax receipts, public debt, and EU rules/guidelines).
[citation needed] It puts more weight on the longer-term prospects of the domestic economy in terms of its assessments of how appropriate the Government's budgetary stance is.