The establishment of the Rainy Day Fund, including the proposed transfer of €1.5 billion from the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF), will require legislation.
In addition, the Summer Economic Statement confirmed the Government’s intention to allocate €500 million per annum to the Rainy Day Fund in 2019 and subsequent years to 2021. This would imply, subject to the prevailing budgetary conditions, that the Rainy Day Fund would contain €3 billion by the end of this period.
In advance of any legislative steps and as announced in Budget 2018, I have transmitted a consultation paper prepared by my officials for consideration by the Oireachtas on establishing a Rainy Day Fund as was committed to in the 2017 Summer Economic Statement (SES) published in July.
The paper outlines some of the proposed operational modalities, including inter alia the trigger for deploying the fund, and the initial establishment of the fund. This consultation paper seeks to scope out some of the design and operational issues around the establishment of such a budgetary management mechanism. I would welcome the views of Oireachtas members on the issues set out in the paper by the end of this year.
