Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 23 September 2025

Committee on Budgetary Oversight

Pre-Budget Engagement (Resumed)

2:00 am

Dr. Tom McDonnell:

It is certainly an improvement. One of the big mistakes we made in the early 2010s was to trash the capital budget. Most people will acknowledge that. We are getting back to where we need to be. Again, as Mr. Nugent alluded to earlier, construction is considered a very volatile profession now. A lot of construction workers have left so we also have to deal with the capacity constraint on the labour side. We are dealing with the financing issue. We still have issues around planning regulation support. However, if we do not have those construction workers, it does not matter how much we put into the capital budget, we will not be able to build more. Disincentives could be brought in against hotels-----