Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 6 July 2017

Public Accounts Committee

2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2015
Chapter 2 - Government Debt
Chapter 18 - Irish Fiscal Advisory Council
Finance Accounts 2015

9:00 am

Mr. Derek Moran:

There is a huge amount of interest in it, the reason being that these phenomena of globalisation are not unique to Ireland. The scale of what hit us before anybody else is quite significant, and Mr. McCarthy was a member of the group. Ten or 11 countries showed a particular interest because they have a greater or less exposure around this. In terms of what it is fundamentally, it is for us not to forget that we have a very high per capitadebt and a huge sovereign debt burden. The legal denominator will always be GDP for all the reports internationally, but there are differences in the structure of the Irish economy that we need to acknowledge. GNI* gives us that metric to look at that. We will see the number next Friday, but it will probably be around 100% compared to 73%, which I believe is our current estimate for the end of this year. Mr. McCarthy might deal with our interest internationally.