Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his kind comments. I look forward to working with him and all his colleagues on this committee. I reiterate my officials and my Department generally are available on an ongoing basis to help this committee in the work it is doing. There have been some really good reforms in recent times and we can build on them. In respect of many of the recommendations in the committee's interim report, we can develop them on a partnership basis and I look forward to doing that.

The Deputy touched on a really important issue, namely, the extraordinary level of savings we have witnessed in recent times. However, we should be careful and put it in context. When we talk about these things in the aggregate, it is far removed from the reality very many families have faced since last March. A point the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, regularly makes, and it is one that strikes home with me, is that of the order of 115,000 people currently on the pandemic unemployment payment have been on it since March 2020. They will be rapidly approaching 12 months of being in receipt of the pandemic unemployment payment continuously. Many of those people are facing great hardship. We need to be very conscious of that when we touch on what is an important issue in the round.

For other people, their incomes are largely unaffected and they have far fewer opportunities to spend money in the hospitality sector, on holidays and on all the things that people might normally like to do. There is pent-up demand. The amount of savings across the financial system offers us great hope that, once we can get beyond the necessary restrictions we are having to impose, many people will want to return to the things they always liked to do. There will be much demand for goods and for services, but it comes down to sentiment and confidence. For me, in any economy that is the critical intangible, and that is why we have always said that moving out of the health pandemic is inextricably linked to our economic recovery. Until people have the confidence that we are not heading into deeper restrictions in the future, I do not think they will adjust their behaviours. For us the key issue is to manage the health pandemic as well as we can to make sure we do not have to deal with a fourth wave and reintroduce further restrictions over the course of 2021. That will then give people confidence, as they see a level of normality returning in line with the vaccination programme.

Much of that money can undoubtedly represent a stimulus for the Irish economy which is something we would welcome. It is the job of Government to give people confidence and time to spend that money in the appropriate way.