Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 31 May 2016

Committee on Housing and Homelessness

National Treasury Management Agency and Department of Finance

10:30 am

Mr. John Palmer:

I will have to go back and get some of the bright people who work with me to start figuring out the margin that would be available under that. The answer, however, is in theory "Yes", provided the money was not used for general Government expenditure. If the Government chooses to utilise the maximum available space under the expenditure benchmark, and we are still complying with the structural balance, then that is the limit. If one is borrowing in excess of that, one cannot use it for general Government expenditure. For off-balance sheet that is fine, but we are then back to the point Mr. O'Kelly made about the absolute level of debt and whether that is a wise thing to do.