Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 20 June 2017
Committee on Budgetary Oversight
Irish Fiscal Advisory Council: Discussion
4:00 pm
Mr. Eddie Casey:
To follow up on that, the council has discussed the idea of targets for debt ratios in the past, but it has not landed on any single figure and has not seen a huge value to these types of targets in the sense that it depends on where one is in the cycle, expenditure pressures faced by changing demographics and matters like that. It is probably unlikely to find one point that is solid forever more. A neater way to get around that is simply to follow the rules on a year to year basis because they ensure that debt is reduced on a phased basis while still allowing us to grow spending in a manner that is in line with sustainable revenue growth. If we want to do more than that, we can do so through changes in discretionary tax policy.
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