Ireland must take heed of watchdog’s warning on budget

What has Ireland learned from the financial crisis? For anyone who has read last week’s analysis by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (IFAC), the state’s budgetary watchdog, not enough.

The IFAC was unstinting in its criticism of Budget 2019, arguing that constant spending overruns and a poorly designed rainy day fund had left us unprepared for a slowdown in the economy.

And that slowdown, it argued, is coming. IFAC was definitive in its ...