Professor Michael McMahon:

This goes back a little to the answer we gave to Deputy O'Donnell and the reason not to link the two. Covid would be the example. If there is a plan that is targeted and has taken into account, as best we can with all of the uncertainties, how to minimise the inflationary impacts of the measures, there is nothing to say that if it was not from extra income, we could borrow it. Ireland remains able to borrow. The National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA, has done a fantastic job. That option is, therefore, available.

A point we would go back to is one the Deputy touched on when he mentioned the opening statement. The one thing that would help here is multi-annual planning frameworks. The right seasonal context to think about what we are dealing with now is not the period until the end of December and then to start anew in January. We really should be thinking about the period from November until February or March. We know that gas consumption is much lower during the summer. Thinking about these things in a multi-annual way would help. All of these packages that are targeted would also help to ensure that people who are lending money to the Irish Government see this as sensible policy.

As Mr. Barnes was saying, we can have debates about whether it is €2.5 billion or €4 billion and about how it is targeted. There are many possible discussions that can be had there. However, it will be costly, and this committee is one part of what helps to keep those costs down by checking the homework and ensuring we have a constant memory of how things can go wrong. We must have a credible fiscal framework. If it was decided that the package would be bigger but would come alongside other measures that would reduce the inflationary impacts of that, that is a choice that could be made and it is for the members, as elected officials, to make those difficult choices while there is a lot of uncertainty. We should emphasise that this is a world of incredible uncertainty. As Dr. Casey was saying, in the next two months, the futures curve for gas could go all over the place. What we know is that it will peak some time around the middle of winter. That is not the end of December or the middle of January but it could be throughout the winter. That is why coming up with a policy and a targeted set of policies is what helps constituents who are facing difficult times as well as businesses that are facing difficult times. It is also what helps to ensure the Irish Government’s planning and credibility remain intact. We must ensure that if we did not have corporate tax revenue or anything else, we could still borrow at a favourable rate to do what could be decided as the appropriate targeted measures to help people, as we did during Covid.