Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 26 April 2023

Committee on Budgetary Oversight

Stability Programme Update: Ministers for Finance, and Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform

Photo of Rose Conway-WalshRose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

That was what I was thinking about in terms of people's expectations of the budget. I am glad we had a discussion of the National Reserve Fund and I look forward to the scoping paper in that regard. There is an awful lot to be learned from the Norwegian model in terms of how it has evolved. Norway has set out the mistakes it made along the way and we can learn from those international experiences.

Further and higher education was my former portfolio. There is a reserve fund of €1 billion, which will be €1.5 billion by the end of 2023. One of our major challenges relates to our labour force and how we meet the needs in that regard. We could not get to how that money could be spent. The fund was not meant as a rainy day fund. It was paid into by employers and was meant to support upskilling and education. What are the technical problems that do not allow that money to be spent? How come we have so much need, in one sense, in further and higher education, and a gap of €307 million?