Analysis: Why budget watchdog was right to slam government’s ‘fiscal gimmickry’
The government introduced a prudent and sensible spending rule and then repeatedly broke it, Lorcan Allen writes
Budget arithmetic is not the most exciting area of government, but it’s a crucially important one. As taxpayers contributing to the exchequer through income tax, PRSI, Vat and other charges, it’s vitally important we can be confident that the public finances are managed in a careful and prudent manner by the state.
And yet there are clear signs this is not the case with the current government. The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (Ifac), the state’s independent budgetary watchdog, couldn’t have sounded the alarm bell any louder this week when it issued a damning assessment of the €14 billion Budget package recently unveiled by the government, which it described as “fiscal gimmickry” and warned the government was returning to Celtic Tiger era spending.
