Full coverage: Paschal Donohoe

Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe delivered a surplus budget days before chairing a meeting of Eurogroup nations plagued by deficits. He responds to critics and defends a longer-term approach to complex funding needs.

Budgetary decisions can squander more than money. They can damage the credibility of economic management and undermine the capacity to make better decisions in the future. This is particularly true of capital projects.

The most striking aspects of Budget 2025 are the amount of money allocated, spent, promised, and deployed, and the fact that the Government has left a sum equivalent to the health budget in reserve.

The last five years have been consumed by change. That change will only accelerate going forward. To be ready, Ireland needs to pick its economic strategy for the decades ahead. Paschal Donohoe has a view on what we should choose.

With Budget 2025 imminent, the minister for public expenditure and reform talks about his economic priorities, countering the rise of the far right, and what Ireland’s economy will look like in a decade.

There was a time when rows between governments and their economic advisers on inflation and spending unfolded in oak-lined boardrooms. Now, they are taking place on social media.

In its last budget before an election, the Government’s bet is that voters want to pay less income tax and access a better health service. Other demands will have to wait.

Replacing Michael McGrath with Jack Chambers represents a generational shift for Fianna Fáil. But with a budget and a general election looming, it is also a big political gamble by Micheál Martin.

Changes to Apple’s tax structure have skewed short-term Exchequer figures for three years but multinationals are again lining up large taxable profits in Ireland in 2024.

As he enters final budget negotiations with his cabinet colleagues, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform talks about crafting a budget, explains why inflation is dominating his thoughts, and makes his case for the Government’s economic policies.