Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for appearing before the committee and giving us his views in the fashion he did. I compliment the Government on its handling of the Covid era. It is not all over yet but it was very competently handled by the Government. We have to be grateful for the fact that good management made it possible to be able to assist or borrow to the extent that we did over the period in question. We must recognise that not all economies supported their citizens to the same extent as ours. For example, some countries had no emergency payments at all, with no payments for the private sector, which was disadvantaged.

While we provided supports, the challenges have not gone away. I agree entirely that it is necessary to improve public infrastructure to provide the services required for future generations. We must realise our population has increased fairly dramatically since the 1950s and it is now incumbent on everybody to provide services for the much larger population, which is to increase in the future. Housing, health, education and, more lately, climate are the challenges that have to be addressed. I strongly support work in this regard. It will be a difficult time because there are competing demands in the sense of keeping the economy on the straight and narrow path while addressing the challenges and ensuring our borrowing to make economic progress is manageable. The Minister said the borrowing to date is still within manageable proportions and that we do have an economy that is sufficiently capable and robust to come through at the end of the day.

The other point that is worth mentioning is that Covid did not come alone; it came in the immediate aftermath of the financial crash. Many people and businesses affected negatively by the financial crash still have not recovered. On top of this, we had Covid. It is worth commenting on the fact that we had the two challenges one after the other in rapid succession. Due to careful management, it has been possible to come through the storm to date relative easily.

I have two or three questions.

On private savings, which is a considerable amount, how does the Minister see that affecting our economic performance into the future? It could well contribute to further inflation if not handled properly or it could be of benefit in various ways. How does the Minister see that unfolding and will be capitalised on to the benefit of the country at large? On the 12.5% corporation tax, some commentators have already pencilled the possibility of a €3.5 billion negative impact. I am not too sure about that. I think there is scope there. We had discussions on this in the past few days with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council. The resilience of Irish business and the corporate sector in this country is still fairly solid and it may well be possible, in my humble opinion, to manage around it rather than be overwhelmed by it.