Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Of the decisions made by the Government on the business support package, the ones that are likely to impact on our deficit position for this year relate to where we are with the restart grant and the rates waiver. While, of course, hundreds of millions of euro is a considerable amount of money those decisions of themselves only move us beyond that €23 billion figure by that amount. However, I believe it is inevitable that further decisions will have to be made in the coming weeks on, for example, income supports and how we support our health services. Because of this, and the external environment we are in, the figure will be ahead of €23 billion. I expect that we are already approaching the upper end of the deficit horizon published in the stability programme update.

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