Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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112. To ask the Minister for Finance if he has carried out a risk analysis for the Irish economy and the public finances in 2016 regarding the impact of the slowdown and volatility of the global economy; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3851/16]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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My Department's latest forecasts, which underpin Budget 2016, are set out in the Economic and Fiscal Outlook, published as part of the Budget 2016 documentation. They project GDP growth of 6.2 per in 2015 and 4.3 per cent in 2016, with an average growth rate of around 3 per cent for subsequent years. 

The text in the Budget documentation explicitly recognises that outside of Ireland's main export markets the pace of economic expansion has slowed and the outlook has become increasingly uncertain. The text also notes that while the spillover effects to Ireland's main trading partners appear to have been limited to date, a more pronounced impact cannot be ruled out.

The Budget documentation also included a comprehensive quantitative risk analysis on the impact on the Irish economy and public finances for a range of economic shocks using outputs from the ESRI HERMES macroeconomic model. One of the shocks estimated the impact of a 1 per cent downturn in global output. The results, published in Table 14 of the Economic and Fiscal Outlook chapter, indicate that a permanent one per cent decrease in global output levels would reduce Irish GDP by one per cent relative to the Department's baseline forecasts, primarily through a reduction in Irish export growth, with an upward impact on the  deficit of one  quarter per cent of GDP. 

The Deputy will already be aware that my Department's forecasts were endorsed by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council and also, that in its recent Fiscal Assessment Report, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council welcomed the Department's analysis of risks and noted that it represented an important input into discussions around the macroeconomic and fiscal outlook.

Overall I am confident that these forecasts are realistic, and take due account of risks which are explicitly recognised.