Public Spending
John Walsh: There is a strong whiff of 2007 about all of this, but there’s reason to hope
The government might be well advised to consider the German system, where a strict monitoring process ensures all spending represents value for money
Of all the idioms that seeped into popular discourse during the Celtic Tiger era, “this time its different” was probably the most insidious and damaging. It was deployed every time there was a challenge to the prevailing orthodoxy that the economy would ride the wave of a credit-fuelled bubble for the following decade and beyond.
Of course, Charlie McCreevy’s refrain, “if I have it, I spend it”, was equally damaging. It underlined the extent to ...
