Danger of the long finger
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ECONOMISTS are predicting that government borrowing will not return to within EU rules for another seven years. And the EU Commission is set to extend our agreed deadline by one year. This does not mean that corrective action can be put on the long finger or spread over a longer time frame, as has been have suggested in some quarters.
Public service union leaders have urged that corrections be introduced gradually, with the pain spread over a longer period than the Government intends.
Higher taxes on middle and high earners would take the place of reductions in public service pay and numbers.
The problem with this is that the national debt, which we have contracted with the EU Commission to reduce, has already reached astronomical proportions.
The longer corrective action is delayed, the more quickly debt will grow and the more it will cost us to service it.
Before long, all revenue -- including those new taxes which the public service unions would like see raised -- would disappear into the black hole of interest payments.
Significantly, the leader of the Labour Party, Eamon Gilmore, has acknowledged that delay is not an option.
Next month's Budget has to mark the start of a lengthy programme of painful recovery.
It will have to be repeated every year until at least 2013.
Failure to do so will mean that the current, gradual deterioration will accelerate, recovery will be postponed indefinitely and the Government, whether this or some future combination, will have betrayed generations yet to come.
