Results 361-380 of 33,049 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: 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...

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 received its submission, which we are considering. I know what proposals it has pushed.

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 entirely agree. The issue still revolves around how we can pay for it all in a way that is sustainable and whereby we can avoid making commitments which, in future, we find out we cannot afford. It is about how we ensure capital investment happens in a way, to go back to Deputy Brennan's question, that does not cause other issues in our economy. I agree with Deputy Timmins that capital...

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 entirely agree with the Senator. In addition to the point he has made, which I agree with, I am sure he will agree with me about the dignity of giving people the opportunity to get a job, progress their career, go from job to job, earn more and feel they are having a good course through our economy, which has immeasurable benefits. From the point of view of this particular economy, 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 am less clear as to what that means for energy and renewables. So much of wind farms, for example, is pre-made. It arrives into Ireland and is shipped out of our ports. As I said, technology and helping people to get a better start in their lives, earlier in their lives, are hugely important.

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 meant it more in terms of employment than corporate tax.

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.

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. I must break spending into two different strands. The risk could be there for capital investment. We need to ensure that our capital investment plans get the balance right between ambition and affordability. How to get that balance right is on our minds. On current spending, I see it as more of a risk but the risk is different. We could end up with rates 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 the risk, and that is what we are trying to prevent. The reason we are setting up all these funds, in particular the Future Ireland Fund, is that if we were hit with a downturn that would materially affect the tax we are collecting, we would have a fund available to us to help with the funding of capital investment. That is, in retrospect, at the heart of so many of our...

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 are three things: having a better regulatory environment in which smaller businesses can grow; the work we do in the National Training Fund to help with the skills and knowledge development of these businesses; and how we support our organisations, such as Bord Bia and Enterprise Ireland, to help those enterprises grow within our economy. I pinpoint those three as the levers we can use.

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: Of course.

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: No, not really. The difficulty companies face in scaling up from being medium-sized businesses to becoming very large businesses is a well-documented issue across developed economies. We have that issue in Ireland, as do lots of other economies. The issue of the Stock Exchange is not just an Irish issue. We are seeing stock exchanges all over Europe now begin to see businesses that were...

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: Is this the growth of our domestic 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: I see that having limited potential for our economy. The reason for that is the importance of the direct link between the US and Ireland.

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: Companies that we have located here would not want to use a third country to circumvent tariffs because of the economic and reputational risks for them. From our point of view, the big benefit companies have is they can just ship right to the US. Geographically, it is harder to see where they could be diverted to. I think that will have a limited effect.

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: This is an idea that the Minister, Deputy Browne, raised. Like all these ideas, it is one I am certainly willing to consider, have a look at and work with him on. This is in the context of the new housing plan the Government is working on. If we were to agree to something like that, I am sure that is the place where we would agree it. At this point, the Minister has raised it as a...