Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach has admitted it is a con. He will set up a strategic rainy day fund. We already have a strategic reserve fund; the ISIF has €20 billion in it. The Taoiseach has not explained the difference between that and the new fund. This is about taking money from our strategic reserve fund, relabelling it and pretending it is a new fund. He says he will deploy it in case the corporation tax base collapses or some other shock happens. He should ask the experts if he can get over the fiscal rules which, as I have explained, do not allow for countercyclical spending in exactly the way the Taoiseach has explained. They state that "a clear template of how a countercyclical fund [exactly as the Taoiseach has explained] might operate has not emerged". They go onto say that they need to change the rules and "To address this, we propose two relatively modest adjustments to how RDFs are treated by the fiscal rules", which would need an amendment to the Maastricht treaty. Does the Taoiseach propose to embark on a negotiation for a reassessment of the fiscal rules, fundamentally to create a con job whereby the Government will create a new fund when it has €20 billion in directed and undirected funds in the ISIF which it can deploy if it wants to? We urge that the Government deploys at least €5 billion of that fund to address the housing crisis right now.

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