Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 4 October 2016

Committee on Budgetary Oversight

Forecasts for Budget 2017: Department of Finance

11:00 am

Mr. John McCarthy:

It depends on the scale. My own view is we probably have sufficient capacity in the short term to be able to absorb that investment. I stress that it is the scale. If went from €5 billion to €10 billion, there would be huge inflationary pressures and we would get less bang for our buck because it would all be in terms of inflation. Taking a more graduated approach probably leads to a better bang for our buck.