Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I make the case that we already have a significantly bigger State in the aftermath of the pandemic. As I look to the time ahead, the number of people working in our public service alone will cross 400,000 at a point this year. Of course, it will cross 400,000 people in the context of a population that is also larger than it was a number of years ago. If the Chair was to ask me what all of this work means for the scale and size of our State, I would say that I think our State will get bigger as we have more people living in Ireland and our economy grows.

The two parts of our State that will continue to grow are not necessarily what we would traditionally think of in terms of the State's share of economic activity. I would first look at the role of our semi-State and commercial semi-State sectors and the role organisations such as, for example, Bord na Móna can play in our decarbonisation agenda. When people think about a bigger State, they do not always think about that in the sense of our commercial semi-State sector. The Chair and committee may well know even more than I do the role that these organisations will play in our future. Second, and obviously, the regulatory role and the imprint of our State in guiding and enforcing the kind of decisions that the private sector will make might not necessarily point to a bigger State in economic terms but rather a State that has a more decisive role in how climate-related economic decisions are made. The obvious impact of the climate Act on the regulatory and planning decisions that will be made is an example of that.