Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and Mr. McCarthy to the committee. The statement makes for interesting reading in terms of us reaching near full employment in the State, with a booming economy, and yet there are so many demands in society. We need to ensure that this budget meets the needs of society and lifts the pressure off services and off individuals. To shape that, I ask the Minister to give us some more information, based on the statistics that have been published, on the fiscal space that is available. There has been a lot of commentary on the fact that €2.6 billion has been spent and people are extrapolating from that there is about €500 million left to be spent, based on what was announced in the summer economic statement and on budget day. As things stand, knowing that they may change in July when the summer statement is published, what is the fiscal space that is uncommitted at this time?

The Minister said that in terms of the medium-term objective, MTO, it will not have any impact this year. Does that also apply for next year and budget 2019? Given that we have now missed the MTO for this year but somehow we achieved it last year, will a convergence margin be applied and, if so, how will that impact on the fiscal space of €3.2 billion that was identified at the time of last year's budget? The Minister mentioned contract manufacturing in response to Deputy Michael McGrath's question and said it was substantial. Does the Minister believe that it was as substantial as is being stated in the IMF report, that is, that one quarter of our growth last year was as a result of the sale of iPhone products? Does he believe that this will be a recurring theme in the context of this year's 5.6% growth in the economy?

I have serious reservations about what the Minister calls the rainy day fund because a person lying on a trolley today believes it is raining, a person who is homeless tonight knows it is raining, or a child with autism who cannot get a place or even a diagnosis knows it is raining down very heavily. This is a fund for which we will have to borrow €500 million to set aside. It was previously announced that this would only happen when the economy was structurally balanced. Given the fact that we are not now going to be structurally balanced and will be quite significantly off target, at 0.5%, is it the Minister's intention to plough ahead with this and divert €500 million from the types of issues I have just outlined?

In terms of risks, one of the areas that was identified as high risk is related to climate change and the fines that the State could be facing by 2020 because of our failure to meet our targets. Will the Minister give us an update in terms of quantifying that risk in hard euro and cent?