Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2025-11-26 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central Yes, they will. I will say on the IFAC criticisms that you have had both sides. I also welcome the transition year students. By the way, the Deputy's party was notified by email at 2.30 p.m. on Friday that I would not be here yesterday. There was maybe a bit of inadvertent misleading of the House yesterday but we will pass over that. IFAC did a research note recently on the impact of US tariffs and other policy changes that might affect corporation tax receipts. There is a downside to it. We know about the exceptional reliance on corporation tax, but that is accepted. Equally, IFAC stated in that note that while there was a surge in pharma exports due to the tariffs at the beginning of the year, there has also been a permanent increase in activity here. Ireland is still a key manufacturing hub for ingredients in popular weight-loss drugs. They will grow strongly. Global sales will reach 62 billion in 2030. The patents do not expire until 2036 or 2037. The global minimum tax pillar 2 will generate extra top-up revenues. The point I am making is that we need downside and upside scenarios in economic planning. Invariably, if it is a downside, IFAC has to do that as that is its job. However, it is equally valid to say you need upside scenario planning as well in future forecasting and planning. That does not tend to happen. I am saying that as a criticism of Government as well as the Government tends to go on the downside. That is acceptable. I have no issue other than to say that we should look at the other side of the equation as well. There is also the determination of expenditure rules. Future expenditure rules in my view should be credible and reflect growth of the real economy and inflation rates. Perhaps the fiscal target of 5% at the beginning of the previous Government did not adequately reflect real economic and inflation growth. What happened subsequently was that budgets went ahead of the 5%. When you factor in population growth in particular and the consequential pressures on services you begin to see how expenditure rose over that fiscal rule. Of course, we will be submitting a medium-term fiscal plan to Europe as is required, but we have to get it right. Deputy Bacik will be the first Deputy in here at next year's budget or the budget afterwards saying that we should have spent more on this or that. I want to make sure we have a medium-term fiscal rule with the Minister for Finance and Deputy Canney and the Independents that reflects reality, population growth and potential expenditures, and once we agree it to stay within those limits. The rule has to be realistic in the context of real economic growth and inflation forecasts and we are working on that. The IMF has done some work on this in respect of Ireland. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-11-26/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:22+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-11-26