MICHAEL NOONAN HAS said he wants to take the Irish economy away from the cycle of ‘boom and bust’ in the coming years as he warned against government departments overspending.
The Finance Minister was speaking at the start of the Fine Gael think-in in Fota Island this afternoon when he hailed “a lot of good economic news over the summer”.
He said the positive economic indicates are as a result of government policy in the last three years. But ahead of the October Budget he warned that the biggest risk to the recovery would be overspending by government.
“If you’d 20 government departments and they all spent €50 million extra – that’s a billion. At that stage then the weight of expenditure again is pressing down the potential for growth in the economy,” he said.
Noonan said the economic recovery must now be consolidated, saying: “If you look back, in my lifetime, we’ve had maybe four cycles where it went from boom to boost.
“When it busts, thousands of people, led by the building industry, [are] unemployed, emigration restarts, the kids are scattered all over the world, [it's] hard to get them back. We want to get away from that.”
He said that economies in northern Europe have a model of fiscal prudence with “strong finances, steady growth”.
Noonan said he sees no reason why the economy in Ireland cannot grow for the next ten years pointing to growth forecasts for Ireland this year and next of around 3 per cent.
As Fine Gael TDs, senators and MEPs kicked off their special parliamentary party meeting with a session on ‘a budget to secure Ireland’s economic recovery’, Noonan said he was looking for ideas that can grow the economy and create jobs and not ideas that would involve giveaways for votes.
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