+1 What RIAD BSC has posted.
What rationale is being followed by those who continue to advocate cuts?
You cannot cut your way out of a recession.
You cannot continue to make cuts without causing severe structural damage to an economy.
Jobeless improvements for the balance of payments figures do nothing for the indigenous economy.
The reason we are still in the mess we are in without a real recovery is because our main banks will not lend because they cannot.
Oddly enough one or two of the smaller banks are starting to lend again.
Perhaps they have realised that after two/three years of "taking it" we are all still here, still persisting and "we're not going away, y'know".
People are tired of leaving Ireland - they want to stay here, rear their children here, build this country up again to be one of the best in the world.
We cannot do this by more cuts!!!
We need to grow our economy and our jobs and skills base.
We need to NOT specialise solely in high-tech and smart jobs.
DO those too, but develop a broad-based economy.
In other words, not the Greens blinkered approach.
Otherwise, if we're not producing the goods we require cost-efficiently, and sustainably close to home, we'll be at the mercy of price hikes by those we depend to sell to us .
They in turn will get their chains yanked by the supply chain costs - typically the cost of oil.
Sustainability and competitiveness must be our watchwords, but you can forget about more cuts Brendan, unless you like making people suffer needlessly.
The only people I want to see suffer, and not needlessly, are the people who authored this mess - like the estate agents who talked up the boom and the chairmen of the banks who so badly served their shareholders and in turn the banks' customers.
It is not good enough for politicians to say - "but you put us in to keep the party rolling" - that is mere sophistry, a method by which they seek to disavow both their responsibilities and accountability by blaming the people who put their trust in them.
Because make no mistake, this mess rests on trust and competence - too much of the former on the part of the electorate, and too little of the latter on the part of the politicians and their endless ranks fo "consultants" and "advisors" - more unaccountable faceless drones.
As politicians they had and have a duty to steer the ship of state according to the weather and best charts available, not where some of the passengers might want the captain to take them disregarding storm warnings.
In that latter regard the Vanity Fair piece showing the reception Morgan Kelly's warnings got in the press and the establishment should cause the lot of them to hang their heads in shame. 4th estate indeed!
With the IMF looking over our shoulders, the gombeen men who ran Irish finance into the ground will have to shape up - proper order if you want to avoid corruption in the land of the mega rich who have little or no accountability.
I only wish the IMF had come in sooner, but you can forget about more swinging cuts or "Indah" might be one of the shortest lived Taoisigh in the history of the state...
Growth not cuts!
ONQ.