Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the delegates for coming and their presentations which are very useful. I wish to comment on a point made earlier. Obviously, as a Government, we want to avoid a boom to bust cycle. We did not move to balance the budget two years earlier which the delegates said was possible because spending money in certain ways, rather than balancing the budget, made more sense, of which there are lots of practical examples. In the case of the health service, moving away from agency staff nurses to permanent staff resulted in higher costs in the short term but makes more sense in the long run. At the same time, we want to make sure any spending will avoid the boom to bust cycle.

The point was made that housing construction had the potential to overheat the economy. If we ramp up house building, as we are doing and hope to continue to do, can the council give specific examples of areas where it would like to see other measures being introduced? The delegates have said that if there is activity in housing, there should not be activity in other areas. I ask them to give some examples in that regard. What changes in policy might concern the council in the ramping up of housing construction activity?

The delegates spoke a lot about the national debt, but what is the position on personal debt? How does the council factor it in? Is it as big a consideration in the context of Government policy as the national debt and should it be? According to the most recent reports, personal debt levels have reduced by more than 10% in the past year, but they are still among the highest, which is an issue for us. How should this issue impact on Government policy and where does it fit in?

The witnesses have stated that Brexit is obviously a significant risk for the Irish economy. Do they believe that more frequent monitoring of the economy or revisions of fiscal policy may be necessary to address it, because obviously things are changing very quickly? Mr. Coffey even said today that - who knows? - we could have a couple of good months of negotiations and that things then would look better but that we need to plan on the basis of a hard Brexit while hoping for the best. Other than that, how do we change our monitoring and our forecasting prospects in that area? While Mr. Coffey's report on corporation tax is separate to that of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, I refer to the volatility in forecasting future receipts of corporation tax and the comments in that regard. What steps can the Government take to try to mitigate those factors into the future?