Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The trend is better than one might have anticipated earlier in the year. I had a look at it today and growth forecast goes from 0.8% to 1.7% in 2016. The trend is in the right direction. It is positive. Obviously one hopes it will be better. The factors driving the Irish economy are fairly well known. Ours is an export-led model and the UK and US are growing quite strongly.

The US is at 3.5% while the UK is approaching 3% and they are big export markets for us. As well as that, our position in the business cycle is that we are coming out of a very deep recession. Spare capacity in an economy when that economy begins to grow is always a significant factor in growth. If one has spare capacity, one does not have to pay extra to create capacity. One has labour resources available, that is, people who want to go back to work. One has liquidity sources seeking investment opportunities. One also has underperforming industries that can expand. We are in a lucky position at the moment in that there is a coincidence of events. In terms of domestic policy, as the Deputy knows, we have dealt with the domestic economy sector by sector and in each budget-----