There’s a yarn that the Irish Government likes to spin about its spending habits, having doubled the amount that it spends on an annual basis since 2016: That yarn is that our politicians are engaged in prudent and sober management of the public finances.
You’ll have heard a lot of it lately. The Government has been warning so much about the upcoming budget that the public could be forgiven for thinking that a significant sum has been spent acquiring hair shirts for every member of the public, so that we can itch our way through the winter feeling physical misery to go alongside the financial pain that we are to expect. But we are also to understand that this is mere prudence: That the hard-nosed accountants are in charge and are making difficult decisions for the long term.
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