Tax Code
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-26
============================================================

James O'Connor (FF), Cork East

I thank the Tánaiste and appreciate his response. Yesterday, we saw some very important information come from the International Monetary Fund that effectively warned Ireland about a level of exposure our economy has when it comes to bloated expenditure and wastage of public money and the risks in our economy, such as the advances in artificial intelligence. They are things the Government cannot afford to ignore. I fear that we are not quite at 2008 levels yet, but we are back in 2005, 2006 and 2007, when the Celtic tiger reached its peak and it all came to a miserable end. I wanted to say that on the record of this House and I hope I am proved wrong in four or five years' time. We need to ensure that indigenous businesses, our SMEs and our entrepreneurs are supported, that our economy gives them the best possible chance of success and that we are able to derisk Ireland from what the IMF has stated is a particular concern.
We know that multinational companies are moving five times faster than the SME sector when it comes to the application of artificial intelligence. We have a bloated number of employees in Ireland working in multinationals. The risk is clear and obvious. It is a serious risk to the State.

---

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/2026-05-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:04+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-26