Results 221-240 of 32,924 for speaker:Paschal Donohoe

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach: Developments in the Economy in the Year to Date: Minister for Finance (28 May 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: I emphasise again that my preference would be not to use the funds to have to pay any fines. My expectation is that if we are in a position where we have to pay fines, it would, unfortunately, become a budgetary decision and we would have to look at the money we have available across our country as a whole. The Deputy asked what the money is being used for. The climate and nature fund...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach: Developments in the Economy in the Year to Date: Minister for Finance (28 May 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: We are doing well with what we have. We will do well to put in the deposits we want to make. The Government is committed to doing that, and the Taoiseach and Tánaiste are very personally committed to it. As much of a budget hawk as I am, even I would not propose to set up another fund at the moment. We have too much going on and too many demands, many of which will need real investment.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach: Developments in the Economy in the Year to Date: Minister for Finance (28 May 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: My best judgment at the moment is that most scenarios are ones in which the Irish economy continues to grow but grows at a slower pace. That slower pace of growth would still compare really well with all parts of Europe and still deliver more people at work in Ireland than there were when I began working. That applies in most scenarios. There are extreme scenarios that could arise that...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach: Developments in the Economy in the Year to Date: Minister for Finance (28 May 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: It goes back to the point the Deputy opened with regarding investment. I have outlined the uncertainty that is there and the many different scenarios. I tend not to spend too much time contemplating all of them. Instead, we focus on what we can do that can make a difference. The Deputy opened with a good example in the question of how we can invest more and get more out of that investment.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach: Developments in the Economy in the Year to Date: Minister for Finance (28 May 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: We found ourselves in a situation where if we were to test for higher than 10%, it would be very difficult for us to figure out when we should stop with scenarios. As we did more and more of those scenarios, it became harder and harder for us to understand what would be the sector-specific effects in our economy and what they would mean for the national performance of our economy overall....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach: Developments in the Economy in the Year to Date: Minister for Finance (28 May 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: It is nice to see the Senator. I have not seen her since the Seanad and Dáil were formed and I look forward to lots of debates with her in the coming years. The Senator is correct that the medium-term fiscal plan was submitted as a technical document by the Government at the very end of our term. The reason for that was because the Government was very conscious as we concluded that we...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach: Developments in the Economy in the Year to Date: Minister for Finance (28 May 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: As the Senator is aware, there is a tradition that once the economic statement is agreed, be it an economic statement for 2026 or a medium-term fiscal plan, the Ministers for Finance and public expenditure normally come before this committee to present our work to it. I am sure the Senator would want us to continue to do that.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach: Developments in the Economy in the Year to Date: Minister for Finance (28 May 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: There is a lot in the Senator's questions. I will try to say a few words about each of them. In respect of the ICJ ruling, the Government of Ireland takes very seriously the responsibilities that we have with regard to the ICJ. The issue that we need to consider is what is the mix of actions that will allow us to fulfil the obligations that we believe we have to that ruling. This does...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach: Developments in the Economy in the Year to Date: Minister for Finance (28 May 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: I thank the Senator. To respond briefly to the points she made, I agree very strongly with her on the value of moral leadership and I believe Ireland, at a bilateral level, has demonstrated to the people of Palestine over many years our willingness to do that. I respectfully make the case that there is an additional dimension to leadership in a situation as difficult as this, that is, the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach: Developments in the Economy in the Year to Date: Minister for Finance (28 May 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: I think we are talking about the same thing. I said I thought the Senator was talking about a restriction. The Senator said we were talking about a restriction on a tax relief. I think I was summarising what was said but, if not, I apologise. Again, I offer a respectful push-back that if somebody avails of this relief and goes on to create a very successful business, I do not believe we...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach: Developments in the Economy in the Year to Date: Minister for Finance (28 May 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: I thank the Deputy for the question. The model that she is referring to is all done at a macro level. We looked at whether it would be possible to more at a sectoral level and we had two difficulties in relation to that. The first is that within the sectors, there can be a small number of companies that can have a very big effect on the sector and we were not able to confidently model what...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach: Developments in the Economy in the Year to Date: Minister for Finance (28 May 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: We definitely have an issue at the moment with productivity. A long-standing issue is that there is a productivity gap between different parts of the economy. For larger employers, those who are working with them either have very high levels of productivity or the measurement of it makes the productivity look very high. In other parts of the economy that are not traded and so are more on a...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach: Developments in the Economy in the Year to Date: Minister for Finance (28 May 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: We will check the figures, Deputy. From a quick check now with the team, we do not see any such imbalance at the moment. The jobs look to be evenly distributed across all the different parts of the economy.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach: Developments in the Economy in the Year to Date: Minister for Finance (28 May 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: That is a good question. I know the Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, will have plenty of ambition to front-load it. I know the ambition will be there to do so but there are two issues we will need to consider. I acknowledge the huge amount of work that my colleague, the Minister for Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform, Deputy Jack Chambers,...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach: Developments in the Economy in the Year to Date: Minister for Finance (28 May 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: I would highlight three. The first is an awareness of wage growth within our economy. While it was a difficult decision to make, I believe the decision we have made on the living wage is the right one. We need to ensure that wage growth within our economy increases living standards but is sustainable as well and that it helps with jobs being created, particularly in the domestic part of...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach: Developments in the Economy in the Year to Date: Minister for Finance (28 May 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: That is a brilliant question. I spoke earlier in the Seanad and Senator Conor Murphy raised the issue of AI. I made the point earlier that sometimes when we are thinking about how we do very well with AI, there is a tendency to think about it in terms of the number of data centres. However, I do not believe that is the case. There is a lot of economic research that says it is the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach: Developments in the Economy in the Year to Date: Minister for Finance (28 May 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: I would say Deputy Timmins has a few AI apps on his phone.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach: Developments in the Economy in the Year to Date: Minister for Finance (28 May 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: Yes, that is what is happening.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach: Developments in the Economy in the Year to Date: Minister for Finance (28 May 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: I thank Deputy Timmins. I have never seen such a short-term forecasting difficulty as that which we have at present. It is a real challenge for us to be able to give a very accurate forecast regarding what will happen on a one- or two-year basis. This relates to the question Senator Higgins put on the medium-term fiscal plan. It is a real challenge we are working through. The overall...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach: Developments in the Economy in the Year to Date: Minister for Finance (28 May 2025)

Paschal Donohoe: That is a fair point. The Department of public expenditure is all over this. It is so focused on the issue of cost control and ways of saving money. We only hear, understandably, when it goes wrong, but there are many examples where the Department is successful in containing spending and costs. Of course, they do not get a public profile in the way our problems do. We have had problems...