Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 9 October 2024
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach
Engagement with the Central Bank of Ireland
1:30 pm
Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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It just strikes me that one of the key components of the big housing crash we had a number of years ago was the fact that interest rates were made low for the German economy's sake and our economy was obviously overheating at a significant rate.
The lever the Central Bank would have pulled, in monetary policy, had it had interest rates at the time would have been to cool down the Irish housing sector with that interest rate but we could do not do that because that tool was not in our hands. It feels contradictory. The Government is obviously under pressure due to its extra investment in the economy, which because of constraints could overheat it, but at the same time the decision by the ECB will have a similar effect.