Government Ministers are floating all sorts of horror options (medical card fees, closing hospital  beds, cutting education grants and Child Benefit, etc. etc.) while at the same time insisting this is the only alternative to income tax increases. I’m not so sure.  So I thought it might be helpful to gather [...]

We’re into the great expectations-management game again.  It happens once a year, just prior to the budget.  ‘Proposals’ are leaked or rumoured.  The media - colluding in this annual exercise - chase around for stories.  TDs, commentators, and people potentially affected are lined up for comment.  No one is any wiser but it fills column [...]

This was originally written for Progressive-Economy
The Minister for Finance’s comments justifying VAT increases is deeply worrying for it evinces either considerable unfamiliarity with basic economic facts; or considerable indifference to such facts in pursuit of a particular agenda.  Here’s what he had to say on RTE (22 minutes in):
‘It (the VAT increase) will apply to everybody [...]

Why didn’t the Irish media report this comment by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform?
‘Today I am announcing further reductions in Public Service numbers.  I expect this reduction to reduce consumer spending by over €1.2 billion, to cut employment by nearly 25,000, and to remove about €2.3 billion out of the domestic economy.  Through [...]

The Government may be hiding up to €800 in austerity measures in their recent Medium-Term Fiscal Statement (MTFS).  I use the term ‘may’ because documents prepared by the Department of Finance can sometimes be frustrating exercises in ambiguity.  However, on any logical reading of the document, it appears there is under-the-counter austerity which the Government is [...]

This is getting tiresome.
‘Minister of State Fergus O’Dowd has said that the Government believes it can save €600m by tackling social welfare fraud.’
The claim that the level of social welfare fraud is €600 million is, itself, a fraudulent claim. The level of social welfare fraud is €26 million.  The level of fraud is not [...]

If one were to look at the headline rate - GDP - you’d say, well, it’s not great in Ireland but we’re doing better than the Eurozone.  After all, the EU Commission is now projecting the Eurozone to grow by an anaemic 1.8 percent over the next two years while they estimate Irish GDP growth [...]

So we have more austerity and less growth, more debt and less jobs, more spending cuts and less investment - welcome to the Government’s Medium-Term Fiscal Statement.
You have to hand it to the authors of the 4-Year plan - they can really turn a phrase in the face of reality.  Try this one on:
‘The economy [...]

If I hear one more time that we have exited the recession I’m going to put my head through the computer screen.  We’ve come to expect this line from Cabinet Ministers.  But when commentators and media interviewers keep repeating this, per Ministerial press statements, well . . . it’s getting a bit much. And when [...]

ICTU’s pre-budget submission, ‘Growth is the Key’ poses a direct challenge to the austerity programme being pursued by the Government - in both its critique but, more importantly, in the alternative programme it puts forward.  Let’s look at the main strands of ICTU’s alternative for it has the capability of uniting the various strands of [...]