Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 24 May 2023

Committee on Budgetary Oversight

Sovereign Wealth Funds: Discussion

Mr. Nick Ashmore:

It is really too early to say without defining the purpose of the fund. One of the most significant threats to the approach of setting up a fund is unexpected events and withdrawals that are on a different timeline from the investment strategy. The longer the term of the investment strategy, the more risk we are going to take and we are going to be slightly less liquid. The chances are we will be asked to withdraw the funds when the market is at a low point, which it was in 2009. The opportunity for ISIF to recover from the financial crisis was lost because we had withdrawn the funds. Those are all critical elements to the design of any fund. It is interesting. We were talking in the recess about how we have the benefit of history. We are very unusual in that we are a country that had a sovereign fund that ended up having to be deconstructed due to external factors in an unexpected way. We know first-hand that it can happen. It is important in the construction of any fund that those things are dealt with and addressed.

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