Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 27 May 2021

Committee on Budgetary Oversight

Fiscal Assessment Report: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council

Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

This is really about consumer behaviour so I think we will see what we will see. It is hard to know how people are going to behave. Hopefully, increased consumer spending will help business to recover. One possible risk is that there may be some inflation in the short run as everyone rushes out to have a meal they have not cooked themselves, and so on. There will be quite a lot of uncertainty in that regard in the short run. There is probably less uncertainty regarding where we will come up afterwards, but it could have an impact. It could impact on all sorts of things, including, for example, on construction costs. We are already seeing a major increase globally in the cost of raw materials and various aspects of the construction process. It is, therefore, going to be a somewhat unusual time.