Sharon Donnery: Macroprudential policy – lessons in the pandemic era

Opening remarks by Ms Sharon Donnery, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, at a virtual workshop at the Central Bank of Ireland, 19 February 2021.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Accompanying slides can be found on the Central Bank of Ireland's website.

Hello to you all and a warm yet unfortunately digital-only welcome to the Central Bank of Ireland.  It is a great pleasure to have you along for this workshop on an extremely important topic, in all times, but particularly in such challenging times as these.  

Globally, we have seen the worst peacetime global contraction since the Great Depression, and the IMF estimates that over 150 economies are expected to have per-capita incomes below their 2019 levels in 2021.2  However, there are signs of hope, with slight upgrades in 2021 growth projections reflecting vaccine rollout, the continued policy support and the expected increase in economic activity as the health crisis eases. And while the real-time global policy response to the pandemic has been impressive, the global recovery will depend on widespread access to vaccines, their effectiveness and indeed response to new strains of the virus.

In the Irish context, our domestic economy was among the most hard-hit in Europe in the early phase of the pandemic.