Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 26 September 2018
Committee on Budgetary Oversight
Ex-ante Scrutiny of Budget 2019: Minister for Finance
1:30 pm
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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It has. The chairman of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, Seamus Coffey, has always been consistent in making the point that we could get to a level of house-building that could itself pose a risk to the economy. I do not believe we are at that point yet. As already stated, the social consequences of the right number of homes being available are immense. I have to respond to that. If we were to decide to put more resources into having homes built, many options would be open to me regarding how we could pay for it and things we could do that might mitigate against the effect on the economy of the construction of those homes. They affect what we can do on a tax level and also refer to how we might allocate money between different Departments.