Results 21,221-21,240 of 33,392 for speaker:Paschal Donohoe

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Proposal to Establish a Rainy Day Fund: Minister for Finance (31 Jan 2018)

Paschal Donohoe: There are no particular criteria for how NTMA money can be used. That money is on the balance sheet. The benefit of setting up a rainy day fund such as this is that there will be specific criteria for how that funding may be used and one will do it in such a way that it is compliant with the fiscal rules.

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Proposal to Establish a Rainy Day Fund: Minister for Finance (31 Jan 2018)

Paschal Donohoe: What is the objective of this fund? The objective is that if the economy gets into difficulty in the future, money will be available to us which we can invest in the economy to offset that difficulty. I am struck by the fact that some of the countries that have been most successful in doing this, although they are asset rich, are those of a socially-democratic persuasion politically. When...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Proposal to Establish a Rainy Day Fund: Minister for Finance (31 Jan 2018)

Paschal Donohoe: My explanation does stand up. I am not putting this proposition forward with the direct objective of reducing our gross national debt. I never presented this proposition in such a way. As I have said on a number of occasions, this is about creating the capacity for the State to deal with an external shock in a way that avoids the need to borrow in the future at what would be a higher...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Proposal to Establish a Rainy Day Fund: Minister for Finance (31 Jan 2018)

Paschal Donohoe: The kind of things I see it being used for include global recession, which has a significant effect on a very small and open economy; a natural disaster of some kind; some event happening in the financial markets; or as a result of policy choices made here at home that lock us out of access to the financial markets again. I used the example earlier of a disease that affected our economy and...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Proposal to Establish a Rainy Day Fund: Minister for Finance (31 Jan 2018)

Paschal Donohoe: That risk is absolutely there. The policy on it has to strike a balance between being prescriptive enough that it cannot be accessed to deal with the kind of difficulties any Government might face, day after day and year after year, while at the same time not being so prescriptive that a Government can never use the money. The Minister for Finance of the day would be central to that choice.

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Proposal to Establish a Rainy Day Fund: Minister for Finance (31 Jan 2018)

Paschal Donohoe: Yes. I go back to the point I made earlier. Traditionally, when economies such as our own have had to deal with global events or the kind of phenomena I outlined a moment ago, the way they do it is by borrowing more. That is a perfectly legitimate policy choice to make. It is perfectly legitimate to borrow more and to respond to difficulty. There are many levels of borrowing that can...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Proposal to Establish a Rainy Day Fund: Minister for Finance (31 Jan 2018)

Paschal Donohoe: I am optimistic we would be able to do it. Organisations such as the IMF are very supportive of the principle we are looking at here. One of the main thrusts of current EU policy is that expenditure or macroeconomic decisions by governments should take account of where an economy is at a particular point in its cycle. That is why we have so much focus on something that is simple in concept...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Proposal to Establish a Rainy Day Fund: Minister for Finance (31 Jan 2018)

Paschal Donohoe: Yes. At that point, it is when the focus on structural measurements of the economy become - for want of a better phrase - one's friend. The European Commission would inquire as to the outputs of the economy on the basis of where it stood in the context of its cycle. If the economic cycle is in such a place where it is in difficulty or where we are going in the wrong direction, it...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Proposal to Establish a Rainy Day Fund: Minister for Finance (31 Jan 2018)

Paschal Donohoe: I can answer the question and we can follow it with a note. It has improved slightly because EUROSTAT has issued guidance that allows us to make decisions on a forward-looking basis. As a result, we have a better idea of where policy on the matter stands. All that being said, I continue to be careful regarding the use of off-balance-sheet mechanisms. Even though some may not be on our...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Proposal to Establish a Rainy Day Fund: Minister for Finance (31 Jan 2018)

Paschal Donohoe: I agree with the first part of what the Deputy said. He summarised my own thinking on the matter, which is that we would look at putting together a fund which would have a countercyclical effect on the economy. I will make one point. Let us say we were to set up the fund as I am describing and stop contributions in 2021, for the sake of argument. We would end up with a fund of...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Proposal to Establish a Rainy Day Fund: Minister for Finance (31 Jan 2018)

Paschal Donohoe: My preference at this point would be to keep it out of the rainy day fund and that is what I will work through with the committee in the coming months. When this idea was originally conceived, regardless of who the parent of it was, it was about having a rainy day fund to deal with global shocks and how an open economy can respond to big events beyond its control. One of the ideas I have...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Proposal to Establish a Rainy Day Fund: Minister for Finance (31 Jan 2018)

Paschal Donohoe: What I have in mind now is to get the committee's paper in February. We will have the summer economic statement, SES, in April or May and within the period of nailing down what the SES will be and presenting it to the Dáil, I hope we will be in a position after that to begin to present the heads of the Bill to the committee for pre-legislative scrutiny. We are talking about something...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Proposal to Establish a Rainy Day Fund: Minister for Finance (31 Jan 2018)

Paschal Donohoe: I will have to write back to the committee and to the Deputy on the specific health projects. I am not in a position to answer that question now. On his point about public private partnerships, they do have a valuable role to play in the economy and there are many other projects that have been delivered well by PPPs. The benefit they have for the State is that we do not make any payments...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Proposal to Establish a Rainy Day Fund: Minister for Finance (31 Jan 2018)

Paschal Donohoe: The current situation is that the National Development Finance Agency, which is an agency associated with my Department, works with all Departments on PPPs. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is increasingly playing a bigger role in terms of policy on PPPs and I anticipate that will remain the case in the future.

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Proposal to Establish a Rainy Day Fund: Minister for Finance (31 Jan 2018)

Paschal Donohoe: There are two parts to the question. First, we have a set of PPPs that are either now complete or under way and I am not in a position to publish details on them because of the way they are conceived but we always look at the start of a project to see whether the figures stack up and then we evaluate at the end of a project whether it was the appropriate way to do it. That has informed the...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Proposal to Establish a Rainy Day Fund: Minister for Finance (31 Jan 2018)

Paschal Donohoe: There is a role for the Comptroller and Auditor General in everything. That office looks back at all the work we do. My recollection is that it has focused on the role of PPPs in certain Departments, in particular the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government. I am notified of any report from the Comptroller and Auditor General and my Department then has to respond back to it...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Proposal to Establish a Rainy Day Fund: Minister for Finance (31 Jan 2018)

Paschal Donohoe: Does the Chairman think he will be able to establish a consensus?

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Proposal to Establish a Rainy Day Fund: Minister for Finance (31 Jan 2018)

Paschal Donohoe: A majority view, perhaps.

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Proposal to Establish a Rainy Day Fund: Minister for Finance (31 Jan 2018)

Paschal Donohoe: I thank the Chairman.

Written Answers — Department of Finance: Vehicle Registration (31 Jan 2018)

Paschal Donohoe: Section 130 of the Finance Act 1992 as amended by section 53 of the Finance Act 2017 provides that from 31 July 2018 N1 vehicles with 4 or more seats will be liable to VRT at the Category A rate except where the vehicle has a BE bodywork code. The BE bodywork code is assigned at type approval stage to N1 vehicles where the vehicle does not exceed 3,500 kilograms, and where the seating...