Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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298. To ask the Minister for Finance the reason that Ireland has not requested pre-financing from the Recovery and Resilience Fund. [8123/22]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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Article 13 of the Recovery and Resilience Facility Regulation provided for pre-financing. This allowed Member States to request early disbursement of funding up to a maximum of 13% of their overall allocation. For Ireland, this would have amounted to pre-financing of €129 million from our overall allocation of €915 million.

The level of pre-financing available to Member States was dependent on the amount of money that the European Commission was in a position to raise during mid-2021 on the markets. Indications during this time were that the European Commission expected to raise approximately €40 billion, and that this would not be sufficient to meet demand if all Member States were to request the maximum allowable 13%.

The Department was aware that a number of Member States with a worse economic outlook than Ireland, or which had been more severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic than Ireland, intended to request the maximum amount of pre-financing available to them under the terms of the Regulation.

Ireland's 2021 Summer Economic Statement noted an environment of increasingly positive economic indicators, with high frequency data on consumer expenditure and job postings show signs of a strong economic recovery taking hold in line with the easing of public health restrictions at that time. Q1 2021 data showed very strong GDP growth rate for Ireland and it was clear at that time that the level of GDP for Ireland would be higher than anticipated. On this basis, the Department incorporated an upward revision to its GDP projection for 2021 to 8¾ per cent, and revenues revised upwards by €1.6 billion relative to projections.

In that context, and given the small overall size of Ireland's Recovery and Resilience Plan, comparatively with our European colleagues, Ireland took the decision not to seek pre-financing so as not to impact or deprive other Member States who were more severely impacted by the pandemic of the opportunity to avail of their maximum pre-financing amount.