Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 10 September 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Ajai Chopra:

Okay. Here, you know, my view is that the fiscal anchor under the programme was the nominal quantity of fiscal ... annual fiscal adjustment and adjustment over the four years. Right? This was €15 billion over four years; €6 billion in the first year and then phased after that. That, in my view, was the fiscal anchor under the programme. Now, what happens in the fiscal accounts, it gets hit by many different things, some that are beneficial, some that make things worse. The idea was that we would let automatic stabilisers work and that one would not seek offsetting adjustments on either side, you know, for positive shocks or negative shocks. And that was the principle that we applied and I think it was the right one. It gave stability to the amount of fiscal adjustment that needed to happen. It was transparent and to start trying to make adjustments and modifications to that because of various shocks, including the positive shock on the interest rates, I think would have been a mistake.

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