Departmental Reports
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-18
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Simon Harris (FG), Wicklow

What I can tell the Deputy is that the trajectory of the tax bands for the coming years is what is outlined in the programme for Government. I look forward to debating that with the Deputy in the months and, God willing, years ahead.
I thank Deputy Doherty for acknowledging this. The Future Forty document is not my document or the Deputy’s document. It is genuinely something that we should all embrace. It is produced by very able and informed officials and economic experts in the Department of Finance. It is as much for the Opposition as the Government; it is as much for the Oireachtas as the Executive. It will, no doubt, provide us with a useful debating tool, and hopefully inject, from everybody's perspective, a degree of evidence into all of the things that all of us say in these Houses, which the public rightly expect.
Are we doing it at a fast enough pace? That is a very fair question from Deputy Clendennen. An objective answer is probably “No”. More broadly, there are very significant megatrends, as they call them in the document, coming at us. There are huge opportunities within that, and there are also huge challenges. We have taken a number of important steps, such as the establishment of what could effectively be sovereign wealth funds. The Future Ireland Fund and the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund are important steps, and running budgetary surpluses is helpful. The NDP provides clarity and €275.4 billion of funding out to 2035, and that it runs for longer than the lifetime of this Government is good.
I will come back to the issue of gyms. Deputy Byrne is right regarding what we can do to positively age. We are not powerless when we look at this document. We are all going to get older but we can get older and stay healthy. What can we do from a policy, health service and technology point of view to help make that more of a reality? On the issue of taxes for gyms, we look at all matters in the context of the budget. I would also point out that there are lots of ways you can keep fit out in the fresh air too.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:29+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-18