Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 30 November 2022
Committee on Budgetary Oversight
Fiscal Assessment Report: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council
Mr. Sebastian Barnes:
Not really. A couple of years back, when the level of public investment was very low, we were concerned that it was a level of investment that was unsustainable and that the economy needed more public investment than that. Now that we are ramping up, the speed at which to ramp up on these things are difficult judgements to make and we are not particularly well-placed to make them. It obviously is a concern when the Government has a plan which they think it is a good idea and they are not able to deliver on it. It raises questions about budgeting. One of the big questions we have had is that a lot of the housing investments are outside the Exchequer and is in other parts, where there is very little visibility about what is going on. That makes it difficult to forecast the public finances and it raises a lot of other questions about what is happening there.