Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 30 March 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Engagement with the Central Bank of Ireland

Mr. Gabriel Makhlouf:

I would hesitate. Next week, we will be publishing our second quarterly bulletin of the year. We are in the process of finalising that. I hesitate to say when we will reach peak inflation. I expect it to be in the first half of this year rather than the second half. The judgment around that is clouded by enormous uncertainty largely driven by the war in Ukraine.

The reality is there are many supply bottlenecks on energy. The pressures we have seen on energy prices predated the war. Certainly, trying to predict when we are going to reach the peak is difficult. We are going to make a stab next week. We will be publishing our view of inflation for this year. Even then, I would just say that whatever judgment we come up with will be clouded by more uncertainty than usual.