Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 19 September 2023
Committee on Budgetary Oversight
Pre-Budget Engagement: Central Bank of Ireland and ESRI
Dr. Robert Kelly:
As I said in my opening statement, the development of a fund is a welcome development that is in the right step. It provides the capacity to deal with medium-term challenges. One of the biggest such challenges we face is demographics. The demographic shift over the next decade to 15 years in Ireland will be quite substantial. We will need to think about taxation versus the potential to have this fund to help address that. There are a number of other challenges, all equally of merit when you think about decarbonisation. At this point, we have all agreed that the fund is a good idea and I finished by saying that the details of the fund are important. It is important to examine how it will be invested, how the instalments are done and, crucially to the Deputy's point, what exit from the fund will look like. How will we think about what the right way of exiting will be? The details around that could determine the success of the fund. I agree those details are really important.
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