Keynote address by Philip R. Lane, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, at the Enterprise Ireland Summit 2023

Dublin, 19 April 2023

Introduction

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this event, which marks 25 years of Enterprise Ireland.^[1] The ECB also turns 25 this year, as operations began in June 1998 ahead of the launch of the euro on 1 January 1999.

My aim today is to review the impact of rising interest rates on the financing of firms. It is strongly in the interests of the enterprise sector that inflation is low and stable over the medium term, since high and volatile inflation disrupts business operations by making it more difficult to execute basic tasks, including the setting of prices, the management of costs and the development of medium-term financial and operational plans. In response to the extraordinary surge in inflation since 2021, the ECB has been raising interest rates in order to make sure that inflation returns to our two per cent medium-term…