Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 16 June 2015
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform
Forthcoming ECOFIN Council: Minister for Finance
6:00 pm
Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source
First, it is very important that we reduce the burden of our sovereign debt and, indeed, the burden of personal indebtedness. They are priorities of the Government, as I described earlier. I hope to have debt under 100% of GDP by the end of 2016. It is not the fact that we have to repay a great deal of interest each year that prevents us from putting extra money into capital investment, it is the tightness of the fiscal rules. It is the tightness of the fiscal rules that enables us to reduce the debt, but if we spend the money, it will not reduce the debt.
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