Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 1 July 2025
Committee on Budgetary Oversight
Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council
2:00 am
Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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Following on from that line of questioning, it is striking that in the opening statement and in the work that was done in the 2023 paper on infrastructure, the IFAC has assessed that Ireland's infrastructure is about 25% behind our peers, those being, other high-income countries like Belgium, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland, Sweden and Norway. They are all ahead of us, while Greece is the only high-income country behind us. That is significant. The council has also noted that the current spending overruns are looking likely to be about €200 billion this year. On the very issue that has just been discussed, does Mr. Coffey think there is a problem with windfall corporation tax receipts going into current expenditure? Would it be preferable to put some of that into capital expenditure? Does he have a view on using it for day-to-day spending as opposed to capital investment? Clearly, we are behind on capital investment.