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

I thank the Deputy. That is absolutely correct. That is a key part of the strategy for the public finances that we brought forward in the summer economic statement. As the Deputy will be aware, our intention is that, by 2023, we will only be borrowing for the public capital investment programme. In fact, some of the public capital investment programme will be funded by revenues that the State is collecting. We believe that by managing the public finances in this way and by having an investment-led approach to securing recovery, we can help the Irish economy in its different sectors to recover and reduce the deficit gradually over time. For example, we anticipate that, by 2023, the deficit will be less than 2% of GDP. For us, that is very significant progress.

We are looking at the overall trends in terms of foreign direct investment. The pipeline is healthy. We continue to see welcome and significant announcements of new jobs coming to Ireland and, indeed, expansions by multinationals that are already here. That has a very positive spin-off effect for the wider ecosystem in the enterprise sector in Ireland and for SMEs here which support and provide services to the foreign direct investment, FDI, sector. We are conscious that many of the domestic sectors are the ones that suffered the most, including in tourism, hospitality and retail and those are the sectors that will require careful attention and support from Government over the period ahead. By implementing the economic recovery plan and through the measures that we intend to bring forward in the budget, it is about striking the right balance.

We believe that overall, the outlook for the Irish economy is quite positive. We need to be sensible in the way we manage the finances. That means reducing the deficit over time. We have the plan now to do that and it is really just about implementing it over the period ahead.