Results 181-200 of 207 for speaker:Edward Timmins
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (1 Jul 2025)
Edward Timmins: Does the council not analyse the different areas of the budget and say, "God, this area of the budget shot up and this area did not"?
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (1 Jul 2025)
Edward Timmins: Does the council point out where the expenditure increases are, rather than just a blanket assessment across the board?
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (1 Jul 2025)
Edward Timmins: Does the council not comment on every Department? Mr. Coffey referred to the overspend in health and there are good reasons for that which people understand. Does the council not comment on whether one Department's expenditure is too high while another's is okay?
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (1 Jul 2025)
Edward Timmins: I do not mean to focus on health. I need to focus on everything else. I will move on because I have two minutes left. In the opening statement, Mr. Coffey referred to employment increasing by 500,000 since 2019 and that it is focused mainly on multinationals and the public sector. I would have thought there was significant job growth in other areas as well. Does he have a breakdown of...
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (1 Jul 2025)
Edward Timmins: I am just interested in the figures. What is the figure for the public sector?
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (1 Jul 2025)
Edward Timmins: And the multinationals?
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (1 Jul 2025)
Edward Timmins: That leaves a balance of about 200,000. I wanted to get a breakdown of that.
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (1 Jul 2025)
Edward Timmins: In the opening statement, the phrase "pumped money into an economy" was used. Is the council referring to cost of living expenses there? In the same paragraph, a deficit of €2,500 per worker is referred to. Is that the underlying deficit I referred to earlier, of €4.2 billion this year and €6.4 billion next year?
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (1 Jul 2025)
Edward Timmins: I have a few questions. In its opening statement, the council says that spending overruns from last year were not taken into account when budgeting for 2025 and that this has been a repeated issue in recent years. That seems like a very basic thing to be happening. I cannot understand why it is happening. Do our guests have any quick answers as to why that is happening?
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (1 Jul 2025)
Edward Timmins: The council talks about good planning and medium-term budgeting requiring forecasts to go on more than 20 months ahead. I could not agree more. I have raised here and in many other fora the fact that we need to be looking five or ten years ahead. The medium-term fiscal and structural plan does look five years ahead, although it does not go into the level of detail that we would like a...
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (1 Jul 2025)
Edward Timmins: I would suggest that we look ten years ahead, especially as we know what is going to happen with demographics and pensions in ten or 15 years' time. Would it be fair to say we should be looking further down the line?
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (1 Jul 2025)
Edward Timmins: Twenty years or a generation.
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (1 Jul 2025)
Edward Timmins: Mr. Coffey referred to GDP. We all know GDP, leprechaun economics, call them what you like. In fairness, the Minister for Finance has based a lot of his figures on what he calls modified domestic demand. I know this is not GNI* but to make that comment, the finance Minister does recognise the limitations of GDP.
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (1 Jul 2025)
Edward Timmins: The witnesses referred to Ireland's infrastructure being 25% behind its peers. I am interested to know how you came up with that figure of 25%.
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (1 Jul 2025)
Edward Timmins: There is a real-life statistic demonstrating that.
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (1 Jul 2025)
Edward Timmins: This is my last question. Does the council have a view on additional borrowing for infrastructure?
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (1 Jul 2025)
Edward Timmins: Does Deputy Neville want to come back in?
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (1 Jul 2025)
Edward Timmins: I will take a third one quickly. What happens with cost control is something that is often in my head. Do the witnesses express any views on cost control, or do they have any words of wisdom as to how we can improve cost control?
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (1 Jul 2025)
Edward Timmins: Does Mr. Coffey think cost control would work better if we had long-term capital expenditure budgets? Let us say metro north, which is going to cost €2 billion. If they, or Irish Rail, knew they were going to get €200 million a year for the next ten years, they could plan accordingly. It is that kind of idea, that they have security of funding. You would never be 100% you...
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Engagement with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (1 Jul 2025)
Edward Timmins: Are there any other contributions? No. That concludes this session. I thank the members of the council and their officials for attending here today. The meeting stands adjourned until Tuesday, 8 July.