Ireland’s budgetary watchdog warns against unbalancing economy
Irish Fiscal Advisory Council chair says government must be ‘very careful’ in managing and spending burgeoning corporate tax receipts
The government risks “overheating” and “unbalancing” the economy if it spends its surging corporate tax windfalls, the head of the State’s budgetary watchdog has warned.
Sebastian Barnes, chair of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, said the government needed to be “very careful” in how it manages and spends the recent surge in corporate tax receipts, which have more than doubled in the last three years to €22.6 billion.
“If the government spends the corporate tax windfalls it’s seeing right now, we’d basically end up with an economy with too much money chasing too few resources. We already have a tight labour market in Ireland. Inflation is already fairly high, admittedly mostly for other reasons,” Barnes told the Business Post.
