Results 33,001-33,020 of 33,289 for speaker:Paschal Donohoe

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Annual Progress Report 2025: Discussion (24 Jun 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: With regard to the underlying deficit the Deputy referred to, it should be said we are running large headline surpluses at the moment. What we are doing is assuming what the deficit would be if a certain amount were to go away in a single year. With regard to the mix between current expenditure and capital expenditure, the majority will be in current expenditure rather than capital...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Annual Progress Report 2025: Discussion (24 Jun 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: We can give a breakdown of the mix between current expenditure and capital expenditure. Basically, and as the Deputy will know, the figures come from our asking what the deficit would be if we subtracted from our current position what we believe could be lost in a single year. Subtracting our expenditure from our revenue gets us to the underlying position. The majority of our expenditure...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Annual Progress Report 2025: Discussion (24 Jun 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: I should ask the Deputy whether he is going to support the finance Bill in relation to spending local property tax.

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Annual Progress Report 2025: Discussion (24 Jun 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: It is a relevant point. We are trying to broaden the tax base, and when we broaden the tax base-----

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Annual Progress Report 2025: Discussion (24 Jun 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: Is the Deputy supporting the legislation on the local property tax?

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Annual Progress Report 2025: Discussion (24 Jun 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: It is a fair point. Every time I come into the Dáil, people say they want to widen the tax base, and every time I widen the tax base the Opposition tries to prevent it.

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Annual Progress Report 2025: Discussion (24 Jun 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: I do not believe the Deputy has.

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Annual Progress Report 2025: Discussion (24 Jun 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: Under this, the Deputy has not.

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Annual Progress Report 2025: Discussion (24 Jun 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: The key difference is that this publication is under the new budget rules, whereas the stability programme update was under the previous budget rules.

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Annual Progress Report 2025: Discussion (24 Jun 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: The medium-term fiscal plan is over a five-year period, whereas the stability programme update was over a shorter period, one year. The medium-term plan is over a longer time period than the old publication that we would have done. The bigger difference is that they are both a reflection of different rules.

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Annual Progress Report 2025: Discussion (24 Jun 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: Apologies if I was not clear enough. There were not two publications. There was just one, but that one publication contained two scenarios. There is the baseline of no tariffs and the second, which Deputy Fleming quizzed me on. We considered alternative scenarios too but we hit the question of how many would be enough. We decided to lay out one, regarding what the medium-term outcome...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Annual Progress Report 2025: Discussion (24 Jun 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: The publication that we are referring to, the annual progress report, does not contain policy decisions. We will do the budget and it will form part of the medium-term fiscal plan that we are aiming to submit later in the year. The Commission will evaluate that year and the plan together. The annual progress report itself does not contain policy decisions, so the Commission has not had...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Annual Progress Report 2025: Discussion (24 Jun 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: A lot of other economies in the European Union are very open and depend heavily on exports. We do have a higher level of international investment in our economy than the norm but many of my finance minister colleagues have exactly the same concerns that we have. We are always aware of the one area of reliance and vulnerability we have, but every economy has an area of risk and a reliance...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Annual Progress Report 2025: Discussion (24 Jun 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: In the previous Dáil, much of the Opposition voted against the so-called rainy day fund and setting up the two funds we now have in place. We can see their value now. How we avoid depending on one-off receipts to fund current spending is by running budget surpluses. For the past two years, the Minister, Deputy Chambers, and I have overseen a number of budgets with a surplus of more...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Annual Progress Report 2025: Discussion (24 Jun 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: The issue I always look at is growth of Government expenditure in comparison with the taxes we collect. It is a valuable barometer. In recent years, the rate of Government expenditure has been a bit ahead of the increase in taxes collected but we have rapidly increased capital investment in the same period. Capital investment has gone up from approximately €4 billion per year in...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Annual Progress Report 2025: Discussion (24 Jun 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: We have to think about how to support employers in a different way. The past number of years have been characterised by different schemes and one-off support measures. It is not sustainable to continue with that approach. I have never met an employer who set up a business because he or she was in it to maximise access to a scheme. People who set up a company, trade and employ people want...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Annual Progress Report 2025: Discussion (24 Jun 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: I am sure he will be delighted to hear that.

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Annual Progress Report 2025: Discussion (24 Jun 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: I accept it can be a difficult argument to make but it is important. The reason cost-of-living measures are not merited in the way we had them in the past is that, even though I accept that many people still find it hard to get by, inflation - the rate of price growth - is a fraction of what it was in recent years. When the Minister, Deputy Chambers, and I brought in the various measures in...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Annual Progress Report 2025: Discussion (24 Jun 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: The Deputy refers to interest. What is that?

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Annual Progress Report 2025: Discussion (24 Jun 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: The Deputy is saying that if we had, for example, saved that money and not had to invest it in the banks, we could have got a rate of return on it and we have lost that.