Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

117. To ask the Minister for Finance the EU contributions to be made by Ireland in each of the next five years if Ireland’s contributions were based on GNI star instead of GNI, with the other elements unchanged, based on best forecasts while the basis of other countries’ contributions remained unchanged; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15091/19]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy will be aware from my reply to Parliamentary Question No. 195 of 26 March 2019, Member State contributions to the EU budget are legally calculated by the EU Commission in line with the provisions outlined in the Own Resource Decision (ORD) Regulation (2014/335). Ireland is obliged to make GNI payments to the EU budget based on Ireland's share of total EU GNI. This basis has been agreed legally by all Member States.

To accurately estimate the application of GNI star for Ireland’s EU budget contributions would require making the same technical adjustments to the GNI of each of the remaining EU-27 Member States. Such data is not available for other Member States as GNI star was developed by the Central Statistics Office as a supplementary method for measuring and analysing Irish domestic economic activity by stripping out the impact of globalisation activities.

To provide figures based on a different base for one Member State, as the Deputy is asking, would not have meaning without estimating GNI star for all other Member States. My Department is obliged to prepare estimates based on the relevant legal base.