Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 3 December 2015
Public Accounts Committee
2014 Annual Report and Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2014
Chapter 2 - Government Debt
Chapter 3 - Cost of Bank Stabilisation Measures as at the end of 2014
Finance Accounts 2014
10:00 am
Mr. Derek Moran:
I would like to add a further comment. Finance Ministries by their nature are conservative and try to be careful. The changes to rules and the levels of scrutiny help reinforce that. In the budget, in terms of our risk assessment, it pointed to the balance of risk being largely external and on the down side. These are issues around developments in China and so on and the risk of interest rates going back up. We build that into our risk assessment and it falls within the tolerance of our plans for, say, budget 2016, which the European Commission has said is compliant with the rules and is an appropriate fiscal stance as we move forward. There are always risks, but one has to manage in as prudent a manner as possible, avoiding excess in either direction to make sure that one does not have very high peaks followed by very low troughs and that one gets something in between. That is the orientation of the policy. I said in my opening comments that the increase in employment is almost across every sector, and that is a positive. It is not only in any one sector.
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