Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The quantum of our capital investment in this country is unprecedented. Our capital investment is approaching 5% of GNI*. I do not know of any other EU country that is providing that level of investment. At the same time, we are running a surplus, and are right to do so, and some money is being put aside to protect the economy in the event that our corporate taxes turn out to be a windfall. I dispute the assertion that we are not investing enough in capital projects. The ESRI report is about examining how far we can go with capital investment and given that we have full employment and a capacity constraint on skilled workers, how we can invest more into the economy and how we can get more out of our investments in the economy while at the same time taking account of the difficulty in hiring more people to do that work.

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