Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 5 December 2013

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform

Fiscal Assessment Report November 2013: Discussion with Irish Fiscal Advisory Council

3:15 pm

Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

I will make a short point. Housing is the kind of area that can be dangerous and it is something about which we would not want to be complacent. As a factual point, what is significant is that the housing sector is far smaller than it was and is playing a much smaller role in the economy than it was at the top of the boom. For example, one of the uncertainties around the forecast is about what happens to housing investment but the truth is the level is so low right now that it does not matter a great deal for GDP. Of course, there might be dynamics under there which we should think about, and we certainly do, but it is not at the heart of the economics, as it was five years ago. Although I do not want to be complacent about it, mechanically, it has got back into its box for now and it is a somewhat different issue from what it was then.