The €65 billion question: how to spend the massive budget surplus

Cliff Taylor separates the opportunities from the dead ends

Listen | 26:19
The Department of Finance has projected a budget surplus of €10bn for this year, rising to €16bn in 2024; €18bn in 2025; and to nearly €21bn in 2026. Photograph: Getty
The Department of Finance has projected a budget surplus of €10bn for this year, rising to €16bn in 2024; €18bn in 2025; and to nearly €21bn in 2026. Photograph: Getty

Over the next three years the Government is going to have a cumulative budget surplus of a projected €65 billion - the biggest budget surplus in our history.

But how should the vast pot of money be used?

To help solve the housing crisis? On money-in-the pocket cost-of-living measures? Or generations-long visionary one-off infrastructure schemes?

Will the spending strategy be long term and structural – or short term and popular with an eye on the next general election?

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And is the surplus a chance to come to grips with our carbon dependency in the face of the climate crisis?

Ballooning corporate tax receipts are the foundations on which this vast surplus is built – but there is retrenchment in the global tech sector.

Cliff Taylor teases out the opportunities such a windfall offers, why it is happening and what the Government should do. Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan and Declan Conlon.

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