Results 23,441-23,460 of 32,961 for speaker:Paschal Donohoe

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: ECOFIN Meeting: Minister for Finance (6 Jul 2017)

Paschal Donohoe: Yes, it is being done through the banks while they are trying to normalise themselves and sort out difficulties they have on which they are making progress. That is exactly what the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund is trying to do. The fund provides credit lines to our pillar banks to allow them to lend for commercial activity. That is the kind of transaction that has occurred here with...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: ECOFIN Meeting: Minister for Finance (6 Jul 2017)

Paschal Donohoe: I do not have that information available for the Senator now.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: ECOFIN Meeting: Minister for Finance (6 Jul 2017)

Paschal Donohoe: However, I will see if I can get it for the Senator.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: ECOFIN Meeting: Minister for Finance (6 Jul 2017)

Paschal Donohoe: It would be very helpful - I understand this will happen soon - for us to come up with a more appropriate measurement for our national income that can strip out some of the big changes that can happen quarterly and yearly. The CSO is working on that and I believe it will offer such an assessment quite soon. Any call the CSO makes on that is up to it. The level of debt is broadly in line...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: ECOFIN Meeting: Minister for Finance (6 Jul 2017)

Paschal Donohoe: The Senator took the words out of my mouth. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, as our national income grew and the level of debt remained the same, the percentage obviously dramatically improved. I would like us be able to do both. I would like our national income to begin to grow in a sustainable way and for us, by running budget surpluses over a reasonable period, to begin to steadily...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: ECOFIN Meeting: Minister for Finance (6 Jul 2017)

Paschal Donohoe: No, the quickest to achieve this comes down to we do with our deficit. The factor that most quickly leads to debt accumulation is the running of large budget deficits year after year. We are not going in that direction and our objective for next year, as the committee knows, is to balance the books. In the years that follow we will run a moderate surplus, just as we have at other points in...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: ECOFIN Meeting: Minister for Finance (6 Jul 2017)

Paschal Donohoe: I will address the points the Senator has put to me, starting with the matter of the CCCTB. We will engage constructively in any action from the European Commission on matters like this. We will not, however, agree to any proposal that might undermine our competitiveness as a country. We need to be very clear here about corporation tax. Many other countries have made choices around how...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: ECOFIN Meeting: Minister for Finance (6 Jul 2017)

Paschal Donohoe: My expectation is that to maintain the demographic, capital and public pay commitments we currently have, expenditure for next year will increase by approximately €1.8 billion.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: ECOFIN Meeting: Minister for Finance (6 Jul 2017)

Paschal Donohoe: Yes, but on the other hand this involves hiring more teachers, for example, or more special needs assistants, as we indicated yesterday.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: ECOFIN Meeting: Minister for Finance (6 Jul 2017)

Paschal Donohoe: That is correct. It still involves hiring many more teachers, however, and many more people to work in our social services. I will outline what share of that figure is driven by the demographic opportunities the Senator refers to when we publish the summer economic statement and the follow-on expenditure papers.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: ECOFIN Meeting: Minister for Finance (6 Jul 2017)

Paschal Donohoe: I am aware of the report but it only came out last week. The consequences of losing the UK's contribution to the EU budget will be handled by forthcoming processes from Michel Barnier. I have no comment to make on the report for now other than to acknowledge that the UK's exit will obviously pose big challenges for the European budget. This is one of the many matters that this and the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: ECOFIN Meeting: Minister for Finance (6 Jul 2017)

Paschal Donohoe: We will do that, Chairman. I have just been informed that many of the figures I gave the committee earlier today come from either the Courts Service or the Central Bank. Even from my notes here, however, I can see that we have figures available for 2014, 2015 and 2016. We will provide the committee with anything that we have.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: ECOFIN Meeting: Minister for Finance (6 Jul 2017)

Paschal Donohoe: That is correct.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: ECOFIN Meeting: Minister for Finance (6 Jul 2017)

Paschal Donohoe: Yes, very much so. I will be working on this area with the Minister of State, Deputy Patrick O'Donovan. We have a number of legislative proposals before the Oireachtas that colleagues in these Houses have differing views on. I respect that. I would certainly welcome the opportunity to meet this committee again to see if we can chart a way forward on these proposals.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: ECOFIN Meeting: Minister for Finance (6 Jul 2017)

Paschal Donohoe: It is not so much that we have them with banks. We have a deferred tax mechanism that works for losses for commercial companies and organisations and it includes banks.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: ECOFIN Meeting: Minister for Finance (6 Jul 2017)

Paschal Donohoe: Yes, they are.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: ECOFIN Meeting: Minister for Finance (6 Jul 2017)

Paschal Donohoe: I do not have a time period apart from saying that deferred tax liabilities are there due to losses. They are no different from anything that we make available to another Irish company or organisation here.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: ECOFIN Meeting: Minister for Finance (6 Jul 2017)

Paschal Donohoe: That depends on how they perform across the coming years. If we were to change the status of those deferred losses then that, in turn, would affect the capital status of the banks thus causing an entirely different problem for the Government and the Irish economy.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: ECOFIN Meeting: Minister for Finance (6 Jul 2017)

Paschal Donohoe: I am satisfied that the matter is a priority. I also know that the high level of premia is a really big issue for people in terms of their day-to-day cost of living. Insurance is also a big challenge for companies, particularly small companies. The Chairman did not ask me to comment but I will not comment on what happened last Monday. Yesterday morning, the Cabinet agreed to begin...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: ECOFIN Meeting: Minister for Finance (6 Jul 2017)

Paschal Donohoe: I am absolutely looking at it. My Minister of State, Deputy Michael D'Arcy, also has a particular responsibility for the area. In terms of what we are doing about the matter, it is not a case that we will take an initiative in the future because we have already done so. The cost of insurance working group's report has made 71 recommendations that should be implemented by the end of 2018....