Dr Emma Howard

speaker

282 appearances 4 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 25 Aug

Dr Emma Howard’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 2.

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Today with David McCullagh · Fiscal watchdog critical of Government's budget plans · 25 Aug 2026 podcast

And so when we think about what's the sustainable increase in spending year on year, so it makes sense obviously that you you, you know, you need to spend more probably every year because you're always going to have some level of inflation.

So um and you're also going to see, you know, I the economy will grow each year.

So you'll have more money and you can probably spend a bit more.

So long run, what we would say is that the sustainable growth

growth rate, the long run growth rate that Ireland could sustain.

Over the long term is about 3%.

If you add in the long run uh inflation rate, which should be around 2%, that means that you can grow spending by about 5% year on year.

And that's a that's a sustainable level to grow uh your government spending.

Now the other side of it is um and and it's one that's not talked about again, probably for for political reasons.

But you know, that spending net of tax policy changes.

So you could also increase spending by more than that if you were to increase taxation on some areas to finance some of those new measures.

So, you know, the the the council isn't saying that the government can't introduce new measures, can't spend more money.

It's just that they can't spend more money.

without sustainably funding it from other areas.

And th and that's something uh that could be done, but again, of course, requires requires increases in taxation.

Yes, and so y uh it's yeah, it's it's become pretty much routine.

So since twenty thirteen, uh budget overruns have been a been a a constant issue.

So you know, we've had budget o overruns every year since twenty thirteen.

Um and they've averaged more than two billion a year in today's money.

So the the council produced a a graph illustrating this in in their report.

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