Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 19 January 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Statement of Strategy 2017: Department of Finance

10:00 am

Mr. Derek Moran:

We included a risk assessment in the budget documentation. The risks, which are external, are balanced on the negative side. It is a technical way of describing the same thing. We have exposures on both sides and a degree of uncertainty.

Not unlike the Deputy's case, although a range of views on what would happen were expressed while I was in Washington, the consensus was that something would happen. It would be the first time since 1987 that anything substantive in the corporate space happened.

Undoubtedly, there are risks and exposures on both sides, but the Deputy should remember that there are also opportunities. Britain will be outside the EU, but FDI will still want access to the Single Market and Ireland remains an attractive place in that regard. The nature of tax reforms in the US will be interesting to see. The devil is in the detail. There has been talk of taxing anything sold by companies that do not come home, but a great deal of FDI is selling into Europe, the Middle East and Asia, not the US. We have always highlighted that our exposures are more on the international side, be they to Brexit or changes in the US. Does Mr. McCarthy wish to discuss the risks?

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