Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 8 December 2020

Committee on Budgetary Oversight

Post-Budget Analysis: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council

Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

From the perspective of forecasting, that is a big question. It is an upside risk to the forecast. The budget projections from the Department of Finance assumed that the savings rate would stay quite high. Our view is that it may be a little lower. Whether those savings are spend rapidly is difficult to say. I do not think I will go out to dinner every single night when the public health situation improves in order to make up for the fact that I missed out on many nice evenings in restaurants in 2020. It is very difficult to know how people will behave in that regard. It does create a risk that people will spend those savings. I think we can already see that a little in the figures. The way people have spent money on consumer durables and such products probably partly reflects that they have been equipping home offices, but also the fact that some of them believe they have cash they would not usually have and that allows them to make some of these purchases. It is difficult to say whether there is a role for public policy in that regard or whether it raises wider questions.