John Walsh: We cannot ignore the laws of economic gravity

If a government wants to spend big, it needs an appropriate tax base. Disregarding this fact in the past was Fianna Fáil’s fatal flaw, but leading the conversation on it now might just earn the party a future

Paschal Donohoe, the Minister for Finance, set up the Commission on Taxation and Welfare to ‘review how best the taxation and welfare system can support economic activity and income redistribution, while promoting increased employment and prosperity in a resilient, inclusive and sustainable way’. Picture: RollingNews

Anybody in this country under the age of 30 will not have voted in an election where it was a given that Fianna Fáil would win the most votes. Indeed, it would be hard for them to fathom that this was once one of the most successful political parties in post-war Europe.

Irvine Welsh, the author of Trainspotting and a former resident of Dublin, wrote a piece in the Financial Times before the 2007 general ...