Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 8 July 2025
Committee on Budgetary Oversight
Engagement with the Central Bank of Ireland
2:00 am
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source
I thank the witnesses for coming in. It is a kind of weird dichotomy. I will finish on these points and refer to Governor's pre-budget letter, which is one of the documents we had. Ireland is particularly exposed to fallout. That makes sense and we need to build long-term resilience into the economy and public finances. Yes, we do need to expand the tax base and we need to look across cuts. That is great but capital investment is required to close infrastructure gaps. This means putting more money into the economy, which potentially risks overheating the economy. This goes slightly against the first point. A credible fiscal anchor is needed to guard, absolutely, but how do we expand that fiscal anchor while having this other huge positive windfall of cash coming in? It is almost like saying to people to ignore all that and that we are looking to the future by reducing the risk of public finances from an excessively narrow tax base, which is obviously to that point and why the Central Bank would try to expand it.
There is a political reality, however, but it is not just political. It is as if someone were managing a house budget based on having had a few good years or having a good job or a very good temporary job and is on an annual salary of €0.5 million but is saying that it could be gone, so let us base our house budget off €35,000 or €50,000 a year. The practicality and the logic behind that is such a delicate balance. I have been struck by this in the last few weeks. I was aware of it anyway but how does one plan for a budget knowing all those things to be true at the very same time? It is a difficult thread to get through the needle.
Today the witnesses have backed the information they gave to the committee previously. They have dealt admirably with every question and they have been very informative to the different members who came at the issues from very different angles. I thank the witnesses for helping with the angle I chose to raise questions on.