Capital Expenditure Programme Dail Éireann — 2021-04-21 ============================================================ Mairéad Farrell (SF), Galway West One of the lessons of the last crisis was that cuts to public spending and tax increases during a time of recession do not ameliorate the downturn; they make things worse. The fiscal response to date is justified based on the dire situation in which we find ourselves. In terms of the stability programme update, I am concerned that there could be a return to austerity. I know that the projection in the update is on a no-policy-change basis. Can the Minister rule out a return to austerity in the coming years? --- 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/2021-04-21/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:11+00:00 Sitting date: 2021-04-21