\u201cDamn the torpedoes. Full steam ahead.\u201d <\/p>\n
That was Minister for Finance Simon Harris<\/a>\u2019s message this week when asked about his plans to introduce a low-tax savings investment scheme in Budget 2027. <\/p>\n If recent warnings from economists about the composition of the savings investment account (SIA) initiative have made even a dent in any Government politician\u2019s enthusiasm for the scheme, there was zero indication of that from the T\u00e1naiste. He insisted to reporters at a Banking and Payments Federation of Ireland<\/a> conference on Tuesday that the measure would be unveiled on budget day, and the accounts would be available in 2027.<\/p>\n Naturally, financial and wealth management types are licking their chops. At Bank of Ireland<\/a>\u2019s annual general meeting, the lender\u2019s chief executive, Myles O\u2019Grady, and chairman, Akshaya Bhargava, extolled the scheme\u2019s virtues. <\/p>\n [\u00a0Time running out if Simon Harris wants savings scheme to start in 2027, says industry groupOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n They also hinted that plans were afoot to ensure the bank\u2019s subsidiary, Davy Stockbrokers<\/a>, could capitalise on the expected \u20ac7 billion of Irish wealth the industry expects to flow into the SIAs in its first year. Happily, the Coalition\u2019s policy dovetails nicely with O\u2019Grady\u2019s and his board\u2019s plan to expand Bank of Ireland\u2019s wealth management significantly over the next three to five years.<\/p>\n Details of the SIAs are still being finalised. Yet, economists Enda Hargaden and Barra Roantree<\/a> told the Oireachtas<\/a> finance committee recently that the contours of the scheme, as sketched out by Harris, indicate it could be poorly designed to achieve the minister\u2019s stated goal for SIAs \u2013 to get the plain people of Ireland to part with more of their savings and put them into the stock market. <\/p>\n That the scheme will be a boon to Irish finance capital is absolutely clear at this point, however. But Harris and his colleagues have done a poor job countering arguments that the policy is little more than a sop to the industry and \u2013 crucially, given the profile of the Fine Gael<\/a> voter base \u2013 to the kinds of people who can already afford to set money aside or invest it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cDamn the torpedoes. Full steam ahead.\u201d That was Minister for Finance Simon Harris\u2019s message this week when asked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73],"tags":[625,962,38420,79,2355,28197,18,553,19,17,4766,44],"class_list":["post-498847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-bank-of-ireland","tag-banking-and-payments-federation-ireland","tag-barra-roantree","tag-business","tag-cantillon","tag-davy-group","tag-eire","tag-fine-gael","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-oireachtas","tag-simon-harris"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116623210269391954","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}