Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 16 June 2020
Special Committee on Covid-19 Response
Covid-19: Impact on the Fiscal Position
Dr. Eddie Casey:
It is 30,000 per year.
Even at that, the more important demographic challenges we face in the long run are those just purely from ageing of the population which would be much larger than those several thousand. We are talking about net flows. The important thing to note about flows of migrants is that it varies a lot with the cycle. In good times, we see a lot of inward migration, as Mr. Sebastian Barnes said. In bad times, we see a lot of outward migration in net terms. Over the course of the business cycle, it might end up being close to zero on average. What really determines the long-run costs associated with ageing is actually the rate of natural births and natural ageing in the population.
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