Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-30
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Simon Harris (FG), Wicklow

I would make a couple of points on the surplus. First, it is better to have one than not have one, and it has enabled us to bring in a €750 million package of supports, one of the largest in the European Union, and not have to borrow for it. If you look at our nearest neighbours in the UK, they brought in a smaller package for their citizens per head of population. They had to borrow and were charged around 5% on the market for that as well. We are using the fact that we have a fiscal buffer to the advantage of our citizens in being able to have a larger package in place but also not having to borrow and pay interest for that package as well.
To reassure people, I would also make the point that the €9.4 billion is not sitting in the Department of Finance getting dusty. This is a projection as to what we believe the surplus could be by the end of the year. It has not come in yet. This is the month of April; it is what we believe the surplus could be by 31 December. I think that sometimes gets missed in this debate. There is not €9.4 billion of a surplus sitting over there now.
The third point I would make, and I say this respectfully, is that in the past perhaps people talked of rainy day funds. We do not have any such fund in Ireland any more. We have two funds that are very clearly actively being used, one around infrastructure, climate adaptation, capital projects, metro potentially and for other things, and another called the Future Ireland Fund, for demographics, including a population that is going to get older in the Deputy's constituency and mine. We do have options in terms of being able to do more in the time ahead but the politics and the facts of the surplus are a little more complicated than is sometimes presented.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-30/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-30